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In order to detect the promising areas for searching the earliest agricultural settlements at the forest zone of the East European Plain (EEP) it is necessary to analyze limitations placed on the spatial agricultural pattern by climatic and geological conditions. Active agricultural development of the forest zone of EEP started in the second half of the first millennium AC after migration of tribes who previously had become familiar with ploughed arable agriculture in other natural conditions. Natural environment of the forest region is much more severe and complicated than those of the source area of migration. These complications include: shorter vegetation period; lower temperatures for all seasons; less fertile soils; higher contrast and spatial variability of soil cover; urgent necessity for regular restoration of soil fertility; need for deforestation.
These severe nature conditions have placed very strict limitations on possibility of agricultural land use and, hence, on village displacement. It should be stressed that not a single nature factor but their specific combinations determined the process. For example, in the east and north east of the region climatic limitations were the most important. They resulted in selectivity of geomorphologic units, when only river valleys were suitable for agriculture. So up to now we can see there specific agricultural landscapes (called porechi'e or near-river-area), which consist of very indented long tracts of arable lands stretching along within river valleys. At the same time the west of the region is characterized with milder climate and climatic limitations were less important but geological conditions were very important here. In fact different sectors of the forest zone of EEP are characterized with different geological conditions. The east and south east of the region belongs to periglacial area, which was never covered with glacier during the Pleistocene Epoch, the middle of the region is covered with deposits of the middle Pleistocene Moscow glacier, which is corresponds to the Riss Ice Age, while the west sector of the region is formed under the last upper Pleistocene Valday glacier, corresponding to Wrm. The area of Valday glacier is characterized with the most contrast and mosaic geological and geomorphologic conditions, young slightly developed and usually bogged river valleys. Thus the spatial agricultural pattern there consists of rather small patches of arable lands scattered at hilly interfluvial plain rather than within river valleys. Our research showed that agricultural spatial pattern in the east (porechi'e) remains since the begging of the agricultural development more than 1000 years ago. On the contrary, spatial agricultural pattern in the west of the forest zone repeatedly changed as well as the corresponding displacement of population. Nevertheless, it was found that even in this case agricultural lands remained within certain geological units.
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