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A sharp increase in human population density and the same time fundamental changes in the location of settlement, moving away from earlier inhabited places points to significant changes in the environment. This period with a sharp decrease in anthropogenic indicators and poor records of slash and burn cultivation and field crop-growing is named “transition” period (Vasks et.al.1998) and indicates the lack of stable and continuous inhabitant sites. This phenomena can be explained by the small size of settlements at the Early Iron Age, expressed by a weak cultural layer and these could be defined as separate farmsteads. Modern farming practices, especially modern tillage, adversely affected the preservation of these settlements. Pollen and plant macrofossil analyses were used as tool to discover traces of human activity and environmental changes during the Early Metal Period.

The emergence and the cultural blooming of the Scythian cultures in the steppe of South Central Siberia occurred from the 9th century BC (ca. 2700 cal yr BP), much earlier than in the western part of Eurasia. To understand a possible climatic cause of this cultural phenomenon, we have studied sediment cores from the Kutuzhekovo Lake in the Minusinsk depression (Southern Siberia) and the White Lake in the Uyuk depression (Tuva, Central Asia). Both pollen records indicated an arid climate during the mid-Holocene up to ca. 4 kyr BP; increased moisture but still predominantly dry conditions at 4-3 kyr BP interval; a sudden change to more-humid-than-present climate in relatively cold conditions since ca. 3 kyr BP, and a return to drier/warmer climate after ca. 1.6 kyr BP. The reconstructed climate changes correlate well with cultural changes reported for both depressions. The scarcity of Mesolithic-Neolithic (10-5 ka) findings there is in good agreement with the mid-Holocene aridity, which did not provide favorable living conditions for the ancient tribes. By contrast, wet climate establishment since ca. 3 kyr BP corresponds to the Scythian cultures expansion to the Asian steppe which started in the 9 century BC. The data obtained suggest the close relationship between climatic and cultural changes within these arid areas. We conjecture that increased effective moisture balance changed initially arid areas into attractive steppe with a higher biomass production which may have launched the cultural development and blooming of the Scythian cultures.

Frequency distributions of calibrated radiocarbon dates for some of the archaeological sites from the Holocene are compared with climatic records shown in frequency distributions of C data sets from speleothems, tufas and peat, laminae thickness, temperature and lake water changes for Poland, Central Europe. All archaeological and environmental events presented using the calendar time scale [BC/AD] are based on C dating performed in the Gliwice Radiocarbon Laboratory and come from “RoSE” database.

This paper presents the first osteological study and comparison of horse remains from the two famous Arzhan-1 and Arzhan-2 Scythian monument in Tuva. In spite of the fact that the horses from both monuments belong to the same breed groups, one can observe some differences in the sizes of the horses caused probably by differences in the local environmental conditions.