Settlement structures and spatial land use in the post Sintashta-Petrovka period of the Late Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC) in the southern Trans-Urals (a case study in the Yandyrka-Akmula and Karagaily-Ayat River basin), Russia.

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At the northern edge of the Eurasian Steppe, the southern Trans-Urals represents a unique cultural landscape with extraordinary monuments – numerous kurgan fields and settlements - of the Bronze and Iron Age. This area became one of the centres of economic development and socio-cultural processes starting already in the third millennium BC. The most prominent monuments are fortified settlements of the Sintashta-Petrovka cultural complex (fig. 1), which date around 2000 BC (2100-1900/1800 BC). After the decline of the fortified settlements the habitation structure changed to the so called open settlements with row-house structures without any fortifications. According to Russian research they are clearly assigned to the post-Sintashta-Petrovka period and are dated roughly around the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, the Late Bronze Age (fig. 2).In our case study we selected the microregion of the Yandyrka-Akmulla River basin and the upper Karagaily-Ayat River with different archaeological sites of the Bronze and Iron Age (fig. 3). The territory is geographically overlapping with our first research period (2009-2014) on the fortified settlements and the area is showing a huge variety of archaeological sites from different ages and cultural traditions. It is one of our aims to look in a diachronic way to the change of settlement habits and the spatial use of landscape as an economical basis for animal herding, living and building up funeral places with kurgans.The approach and methods used to answer these questions are archaeological excavations, geophysical prospections, and the interpretation of material culture, including osteological and anthropological remains, as well as charred botanical remains.The archaeological record points to a Late Bronze Age settlement structure that was characterized by smaller units, mostly row-house structures, in which different types of buildings are to be assumed. This allows the assumption that this type of settlement functioned on the basis of smaller groups, probably based on family clans. One of the questions intensively discussed concerns the reason for the transition from fortified to open settlements and the postulated striking change, which took place between the Middle and Late Bronze Age in the 2nd mill. BC.