POLLEN, PHYTOLITHS, AND CHARCOAL AS COMPLEMENTARY PROXIES TO STUDY THE IMPACT OF PASTORALISM ON A HIGHLAND MEADOW IN THE CRIMEAN MOUNTAINS

The summits of the Crimean Mountains consist of a series of calcareous plateaus known in the local Tatar language as yaila (summer pastures) characterized petrophytic steppe vegetation on high grounds and grassy meadows in karstic depressions. The plateaus are surrounded by dense forests, pine dominated in the south and broadleaf dominated on the north and dissecting valleys. Two currents of thought among ecologists tried to explain the origin of the herbaceous communities of the modern Yaila, one refers to climatic factors that impede the development of forest and another that sustains that the development of pastoralism since the Neolithic transformed the once forested Yaila into steppe. To test these hypotheses, the study presented here uses a series of proxies (pollen, opal phytoliths, and microscopic charcoal) from a section of sediments of a karstic depression in the Yaltinskaya Yaila, A combination of pollen and spores, phytoliths, charcoal, and sedimentation suggest that the Crimean Yaila has been a steppe for at least the past 8000 years. Although influence of pastoralism is clear in the middle Holocene, the strong pastoral pressure on the Yaila occurs within the past 2000 years, coinciding probably with the arrival of large population during the so-called Migration Period, a time that sees numerous settlements in the Crimean Mountains. In this particular case, the combination of pollen, phytoliths, charcoal, particle size analysis and magnetic susceptibility provide evidence of erosional processes concomitant with landscape transformation by agricultural societies.