Settlements of the Cucuteni–Trypillian culture

Map showing the approximate maximal extent of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture (all periods)[1]

The study of the settlements of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture provides important insights into the early history of Europe. The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture, which existed in the present-day southeastern European nations of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine during the Neolithic Age and Copper Age, from approximately 5500 to 2750 BC, left behind thousands of settlement ruins containing a wealth of archaeological artifacts attesting to their cultural and technological characteristics.[2] Refer to the main article for a general description of this culture; this article deals with its settlements.

Settlements

In terms of overall size, some of Cucuteni-Trypillian sites, such as Talianki (with a population of 15,000 and covering an area of some 450 hectares – 1100 acres) in the Uman district of Ukraine, are as large as (or perhaps even larger than) the more famous city-states of Sumer in the Fertile Crescent, and these Eastern European settlements predate the Sumerian cities by more than half of a millennium. The reason that academicians have not designated the gigantic settlements of Cucuteni-Trypillian culture as "cities", is due to the lack of conclusive evidence for internal social differentiation or specialization.[3] However, there is some debate among scholars whether these settlements ought to be labeled as proto-cities.[4] The Cucuteni-Trypillian settlements were usually located on a place where the geomorphology provided natural barriers to protect the site: most notably using high river terraces or canyon edges. The natural barriers were supplemented with fences, earthworks and ditches, or even more elaborate wooden and clay ramparts.[5](p103) The role of the fortifications found at these settlements was probably to protect the tribe's domestic animal herd from wild predators.[6] Other hypotheses are that the fortifications were for protection against enemy attacks, or as a means to gather the community.[5](p112) The role of these fortifications, however, is still debated among scholars.

The most common arrangement of construction for Cucuteni-Trypillian settlements was to place most of the buildings in a circular pattern surrounding a central structure; some examples of this arrangements were found at Târpeşti, Ioblona, Berezivka, Onoprievka, and Răşcani.[5](p103) The earliest villages consisted of ten to fifteen wattle-and-daub households. In their heyday, settlements expanded to include several hundred large huts, sometimes with two stories. These houses were typically warmed by an oven, and had round windows. Some of the huts included kilns, which were used to fire the distinctive pottery for which the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture is known for.

These settlements underwent periodical acts of destruction and re-creation, as they were burned and then rebuilt every 60–80 years. Some scholars have theorized that the inhabitants of these settlements believed that every house symbolized an organic, almost living, entity. Each house, including its ceramic vases, ovens, figurines and innumerable objects made of perishable materials, shared the same circle of life, and all of the buildings in the settlement were physically linked together as a larger symbolic entity. As with living beings, the settlements may have been seen as also having a life cycle of death and rebirth.[7]

For more details on this topic, see House burning of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture.

As the settlements grew larger, the houses were arranged in two elliptical rows, separated by a space of 70–100 metres (220–320 feet). Each household was almost completely self-supportive within these communities, as if instead of being located within a settlement, each family was living away from town and neighbors in the country. There was a lack of public infrastructure within these settlements, which compelled the inhabitants to include all aspects of their lives within their own domicile; ovens, kilns, working, and sleeping areas were all contained within the same space as the family’s sacred altars. Thus the buildings included both the sacred and profane, which some authorities see as evidence to support the idea that the inhabitants viewed their homes as living beings.[8]

Largest settlements

Reconstruction of Trypillian city Talianki 4000 B.C.
Reconstruction of Maydanets 4000 B.C.

The existence of the giant settlements was discovered in the 1960s, when the military topographer K.V. Shishkin noticed the presence of peculiar spots from certain aerial photographs.[4]

Scholars posit two theories regarding the impetus behind the formation of the large Cucuteni-Trypillian settlements:

  1. That they were created in response to the threat of invaders or attacks from people of the open steppes.
  2. That they appeared as a result of natural development and growth, which included the threat of inter-tribal warfare from other Cucuteni-Trypillian settlements, as the population growth exerted economic and social pressures on the limited resources of the area.[4]

Ukrainian archeologist Ivan T. Černjakov credits the large size of some of the Cucuteni-Trypillian settlements to their agricultural system, which was affected by the climatic changes over the years.[9] This can be seen by examining the historic and modern changes in sea level of the nearby Black Sea.[9]

Some of these large settlements include:

Reconstruction of habitable fortification wall Maydanets 4000 B.C.

At 2009 British-Ukrainian archaeological expedition, organized by John Chapman and Mykhailo Videiko focussed on the 300-ha. mega-site of Nebelivka, Kirovograd domain, enabling the production of a 15-ha. geophysics plot with over 50 burnt structures and a small number of unburnt structures, as well as pits and other anomalies. Remains of one house was excavated. This settlement, dated to BII perion of Trypillia Culture, was the largest around 4000 BC.

With the mega settlements of the Cucuteni–Trypillian culture starting in 4300 BC the period of very large settlements would continue for almost 2000 years. To date (2014) more than 2440 Cucuteni-Trypillia settlements are discovered so far in Moldova, Ukraine and Romania. 194 (8%) of these settlements had an area of more than 10 hectares between 5000 - 2700 B.C. and more than 29 settlements had an area in the range 100 - 300 - 450 Hectares and 2800 houses.[10][11][12][13]

The settlements were primarily administrative, military and religious centres and not for crafts. The typical Trypillian hierarchy was one dominant "capital" with a population up to 15000 people and more than 100 Hectares, this capital was surrounded by dependent towns (satellite town´s) typically in the size range 10-40 Hectares and villages in the range of 2-7 Hectares. The Capital controlled territories as far away as 20 km (12,5 mi) from the center. [14]

The latest research indicates that the settlements had three level settlement hierarchy, with the possibility of state-level societies. An excavated mega-structures suggests the presence of public buildings for meetings or ceremonies.[15]

The following are a list with the largest settlements with approximate time of peak population. Remember, population estimates of ancient settlements should always be taken with caution, with different interpretations depending on the scholar.

5000-4600 BC 4300-4000 BC 4000-3600 BC 3600-3200 BC 3200-2750 BC
Mogylna. 500-800
Vesioly Kut. 5000-7500
Nebelivka. 10000-15000
Trypillia. 6600-10000
Myropillya. 6600-10000
Kharkivka. 3300-6500
Glubochek. 3300-6500
Pianeshkove. 3300-6500
Vil’khovets. 3300-6500
Fedorovka, Ukraine. 3300-6500
Tomashovka. 6600-10000
Maydanets. 10000
Dobrovody. 10000
Talianki. 6300-15000-30000
Khrystynivka. 3300-6500
Volodymyrivka. 3300-6500
Peregonivka. 3300-6500
Vladyslavcyk. 3300-6500
Chychyrkozivka. 10000-15000
Kvitky. 5000-7500
Ksaverove. 3300-6500
Yaltushkiv. 3300-6500
Sushkivka. 3300-6500
Stina, Ukraine. 3300-6500
Romanivka. 3300-6500
Rozsokhuvatka. 3300-6500
Apolyanka. 3300-6500
Apolyanka. 3300-6500
Kosenivka. 3300-6500
Kocherzhyntsi. 3300-6500
  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Khol was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

Ultimately, the large scale of the Cucuteni-Trypillian settlements may have contributed to the downfall of their society, according to a theory that attributes their collapse to ecological factors.[16] Due to a dramatic worldwide climate change around 3200 BC, the area of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture would have been plunged into a devastating "Dust Bowl" type of drought. With their reliance on agriculture to produce food, feeding the many inhabitants of these large-scale settlements would have been unsustainable, leading to the dramatic end of the Cucuteni-Trypillian farming society, and replaced by the more drought-appropriate pastoral nomadic society of the Proto-Indo-Europeans that followed.[17]

See also

References

  1. ↑ superimposed on modern state and provincial borders; following Igor Manzura, “Steps to the Steppe: Or, How the North Pontic Region was Colonized,” Oxford Journal of Archaeology XXIv.4 (2005), pp. 313–338.
  2. ↑ Mallory, James P (1989). In search of the Indo-Europeans: language, archaeology and myth. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05052-X. OCLC 246601873.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Khol, Philip L. (2002). "Archeological transformations: crossing the pastoral/agricultural bridge". Iranica Antiqua (Leiden: E.J. Brill) 37: 151–190. OCLC 60616426. Retrieved 21 November 2009.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Videĭko, Mikhailo Yu. (2002), Трипільські протоміста. Історія досліджень [Trypillian proto-cities: history of investigations] (in Ukrainian), Kiev: Tovarystvo Kolo-Ra, pp. 103–125, OCLC 52587844
  5. 1 2 3 Bailey, Douglass W. (2005). Prehistoric figurines: representation and corporeality in the Neolithic. London; New York: Routledge. OCLC 56686499.
  6. ↑ Marinescu-Bîlcu, Silvia (1981). "Tîrpeşti: from prehistory to history in eastern Romania". British archaeological reports international series 107. Translated by Bolomey, Georgeta. Oxford: British archaeological reports (B.A.R.). ISBN 0-86054-125-8. OCLC 16546798.
  7. ↑ Gheorghiu, Dragoş (2006), "A fire cult in South European Chalcolithic traditions? On the relationship between ritual contexts and the instrumentality of fire", in Barrowclough, David A.; Malone, Caroline, Explorations into the conditions of spiritual creativity in prehistoric Malta, Cult in context: comparative approaches to prehistoric and ethnographic religious practices, Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 269–284, ISBN 978-1-84217-303-9, OCLC 309578661
  8. ↑ Menotti, Francesco (2007), "The Tripolye house, a sacred and profane coexistence!", 6th World Archaeological Congress (WAC6), Dublin, OCLC 368044032 http://www.ucd.ie/wac-6/ Missing or empty |title= (help)
  9. 1 2 Mantu, Cornelia-Magda (2000). "Cucuteni–Tripolye cultural complex: relations and synchronisms with other contemporaneous cultures from the Black Sea area". Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica (Iași, Romania: Iași University) VII: 267. OCLC 228808567.
  10. ↑ Videiko M YU Trypillia culture proto-cities after 40 years of invistigations. Trypillian Civilization journal. Videiko M YU. 2011.
  11. ↑ Trypillian giant settlements. Anatoly Rudenko. academia.edu. 2014.
  12. ↑ The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia. Philip L. Kohl, Cambridge University Press. 2007.
  13. ↑ The History of Central Asia: The Age of the Steppe Warriors. Christoph Baumer, I.B.Tauris. 2012.
  14. ↑ VIDEIKO M. YU. TRYPILLIA CULTURE PROTO-CITIES: AFTER 40 YEARS OF INVESTIGATIONS. VIDEIKO M. YU. Trypillian Civilization Journal ISSN 2155-871X.
  15. ↑ Chapman, John; Videiko, Mikhail; Gaydarska, Bisserka; Burdo, Natalia; Hale, Duncan; Villis, Richard; Swann, Natalie; Thomas, Nathan; Edwards, Patricia; Blair, Andrew; Hayes; Nebbia, Marco; Rud, Vitalij (2014). "The planning of the earliest European proto-towns: a new geophysical plan of the Trypillia mega-site of Nebelivka, Kirovograd Domain, Ukraine". Antiquity 88 (339). |first11= missing |last11= in Authors list (help)
  16. ↑ Anthony, David W. (2007). The horse, the wheel, and language: how Bronze Age riders from the Eurasian steppes shaped the modern world. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-05887-0.
  17. ↑ Todorova, Henrietta (1995). Bailey, Douglass W.; Panayotov, Ivan, eds. "The Neolithic, Eneolithic, and Transitional in Bulgarian prehistory". Prehistoric Bulgaria. Monographs in world archaeology (Madison, WI: Prehistoric Press) (22): 79–98. ISBN 1-881094-11-1.

External links

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