New Results of Interdisciplinary Study of Bronze Age Settlements in Northwestern Crimea

Abstract

The research into the settlements on the Tarkhankut peninsula is the most relevant issue of the Crimean Bronze Age. More than forty new Bronze Age settlements have been discovered by means of complex interdisciplinary methods (analysis of satellite imagery, GPS routes for land exploration, magnetic and electromagnetic surveys, excavations). Oval structures were found on more than twenty new sites using non-invasive methods. By ethnographic similarities, they were interpreted as “livestock corrals” with stone foundations of walls. To test this hypothesis and to identify the time of existence, four settlements were excavated. It has been found that some settlements were repeatedly populated. Basic archaeological material and radiocarbon dating show that two settlements (Tarkhankut-18 and Tarkhankut-22a) existed in the final period of the Middle Bronze Age. They were left by communities of Babino culture. Based on the data of geochemical analysis of soil samples taken at a test pit 1 at Tarkhankut-18 settlement, the main function of this part can be defined as livestock enclosure-corral. Two other settlements existed in the Late Bronze Age. They were left by communities of Sabatinovka (Tarkhankut-H2) and Belozerka (Tarkhankut-H8) cultures. “Livestock corrals” are very close to structures unearthed on the sites of Hospital II and Gorodishche 11 km, which date to the Middle Bronze Age and are attributed to Kamensk culture of eastern Crimea. The structures of the Middle and Late Bronze Age found in Crimea are similar to synchronous objects from the Circumpontic region. It is indicative of the existence of specific non-burial stone architecture in the world of moving herders.