Environmental Changes and Human Impact on Holocene Evolution of the Horodyska River Valley (Lublin Upland, East Poland)

Interdisciplinary palaeoenvironmental studies, conducted near the multi-cultural archaeological sites in the Horodyska River valley (Lublin Upland, East Poland), enable to reconstruct natural and anthropogenic changes of fluvial landscape in the Holocene. The changes are evidenced by the results of archaeological, geological, sedimentological and palynological investigations, as well as radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating. The Horodyska fluvial system started functioning at the turn of the Late Vistulian and Preboreal. From the beginning of the Subatlantic the record of environmental changes in valley deposits bears the mark of human impact. Main phases of settlement on the river valley bottom (higher terrace) correspond to rather dry periods (Neolithic, Bronze Age, Halstadt period, period of Roman influence, early Middle Ages). Moistening of climate and its associated rise of groundwater level forced people to move settlement on the loess plateau and found a stronghold at the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries.