This article is devoted to the understanding of the importance of seasonal use of grasslands in the occupation of the Eurasian steppe during the Bronze Age. The pilot section of the research is Kalmykia – a steppe situated between the lower Volga and the Don rivers. We have to look at specific strategies of using local environments, river valleys, upland plateaux, and open steppe lands. During the third millennium BC, pastoralists of the Yamnaya and Catacomb cultures began to exploit the Eurasian steppe grasslands and they had to take advantage of the seasonal variation in steppe vegetation to create a sustainable economy. Seasonal use of grasslands became the main feature of the definition of pastoralism. This is the first time that early steppe materials have been analysed for seasonal data. On the basis of a combination of the seasonal data, settlement data and recent chronological information, a preliminary reconstruction is presented of two contrasting periods of land use for the third millennium BC.
