Development of the Arctic and Subarctic zone of the near Pechora area in the ancient time and the middle ages according to archeology

During the Eneolithic Age (beginning - third quarter of III millennium B.C.) the region is settled by bearers of Chuzhyael archaeological culture, which basic area is the taiga zone of Northern Pre-Urals. Occurrence of antiquities of this culture in the Polar region is connected with favorable environmental conditions. The beginning of subboreal cold snaps and reduction of territory occupied with forests causes outflow of the population to the Pre-Polar zone of modern northern taiga where materials of Choinovtino culture of the Eneolithic epoch (last quarter of III - first half of II millennium B.C.), Ataman-Nyur, Lebyazhye archaeological cultures of the Bronze Age (middle of II - beginning of I millennium B.C.) are revealed. In the Arctic zone not numerous short-term “Lebyazhye” camp-sites are found. In the end of the Bronze Age bearers of Korshakovo culture that had come from behind the Urals began to develop Bolshezemelskaya and Malozemelskaya tundra. In the forest zone of the Pechora Pre-Polar area antiquities of cultures of figure-stamped and textile-impressed ceramics were spread.In the Early Iron Age, in the first half of I millennium B.C., the population of the Near-Pechora area uses the regions of Bolshezemelskaya and Malozemelskaya tundra as hunting-fishing territory. In the second half of I millennium B.C., in the maximum cold snap, there is an outflow of human collectives from the Arctic zone of the Near-Pechora area. In the fist half - middle of I millennium A.D. in the Arctic and Subarctic zones of the Near-Pechora area complexes of Bichevnik and Moreyu cultural types are spread. In the middle - second half of I millenniumA.D. in territory of Bolshezemelskaya and Malozemelskaya tundra the subarctic culture genetically connected with cultures of the Ob-Yamal north is formed.In the beginning of II millennium A.D. the process of Old Russian colonization of the region starts. The first archaeological evidence of penetration of the Russians to the Pechora area refers to XII century and is presented, basically, by complexes of Old Russian metal wares; in XIII-XVI centuries Russian settlements are fixed. The result of the process of colonization of the Low Pechoraarea was that this territory was entered in the structure of the Russian state and a new ethnocultural map of the region was created.