The influence of natural forces and the ways of adaptation to them by Tobolsk residents in the 17th–19th cc. (by the archaeological and historical evidence)

Abstract

The architectural appearance of Tobolsk was developing and changing throughout the period of the 17th–19th cc. In the history of the city, there were impeding factors of this process associated with the activity of natural forces. Its lower quarter, located on the alluvial plane, was regularly subjected to the floods of the Irtysh River. They caused substantial physical damage to the city, eroded the loamy riverbank, and damaged roads, structures of the bridges, shops, churches, and residential houses. The upper quarter, on the contrary, suffered from the lack of water, which had to be delivered from the piedmont part. This situation was exasperated by the high overcrowding of the population and timber-housing density. Therefore, fire accidents were a real scourge of Tobolsk. The paper concerns the causes of the regular occurrence of natural disasters in Tobolsk, their influence on the development of its urban-planning structure and formation of adaptation processes with respect to them in the subsistence culture of Tobolsk residents. The novelty of the research is due to the fact that the historical and archaeological materials are considered in the synthesis. The historical sources contain information on the construction and renovation of the main city buildings, their destruction in the result of fires and floods, and refer to the measures taken by the authorities to counter these events. The archaeological data shows how the residents of Tobolsk were coping with the destructive power of natural elements. The research revealed the measures undertaken by the Tobolsk residents towards the reduction of the fire hazard: police surveillance, street planning, stone building, change of the structural features of ovens, house thermal insulation, building of Nikolsky Vzvoz and a water tower. Protection from snowmelt floods, highwaters and the high level of the ground waters centred around the bank strengthening of the Irtysh and its tributaries by ramming in poles and timber logs with tamping the free space with stone, digging ditches for water diversion, backfilling certain platforms with subsoil, and by building timber houses on subcletions, houses with stone foundation on stilts or ground sills. In general, using the archaeological and histrorical materials, the mechanisms of the adaptation of the Tobolsk population to the natural-climatic environmental conditions have been identified.

Keywords

• tobolsk
• 17th–19th centuries
• floods
• fires
• adaptation processes
• historical and archaeological sources