Settlements of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture
Cucuteni–Trypillia culture (c. 4800 to 3000 BC) |
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The study of the settlements of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture provides important insights into the early
Settlements
The latest research (2014) suggests that some of the largest mega sites contained as many as 3,000 structures and with the possibility of 20,000 to 46,000 inhabitants.
In terms of overall size, some of Cucuteni-Trypillia sites, such as
The most common arrangement of construction for Cucuteni-Trypillia 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.[8]: 103 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-Trypillia culture is known.
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.
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.[11]
Largest settlements
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.[7]
Scholars posit two theories regarding the impetus behind the formation of the large Cucuteni-Trypillia settlements:
- That they were created in response to the threat of invaders or attacks from people of the open steppes.
- That they appeared as a result of natural development and growth, which included the threat of inter-tribal warfare from other Cucuteni-Trypillia settlements, as the population growth exerted economic and social pressures on the limited resources of the area.[7]
Ukrainian archeologist Ivan T. Černjakov credits the large size of some of the Cucuteni-Trypillia settlements to their agricultural system, which was affected by the climatic changes over the years.[12] This can be seen by examining the historic and modern changes in sea level of the nearby Black Sea.[12]
Some of these large settlements include:
- Talianki, Ukraine – c. 3700 BCE – up to 21,000 inhabitants, up to 2,700 houses, and covered an area of 450 hectares (1100 acres).[6] Talianki was the largest Trypillia settlement around 3700 BC., after beginning of regular excavations at 1981 were explored more than 42 dwellings and few pits.
- Dobrovody, Ukraine – c. 3800 BCE – up to 16,200 inhabitants, and covered an area of 250 hectares (600 acres, explored remains of 5 dwellings.[6]
- Nebelivka, Ukraine - c. 4000 BCE, up to 300 hectares (740 acres) and 15,000 residents.[7][13]
A 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 were excavated. This settlement, dated to B II period of Trypillia Culture, was the largest around 4000 BCE.
With the mega settlements of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture starting in 4300 BCE the period of very large settlements would continue for almost 2,000 years. To date (2014) more than 2,440 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 BCE and more than 29 settlements had an area in the range 100–450 hectares and 2,800 houses.[14][15][16][17]
The settlements were primarily administrative,
The latest research indicates that the settlements had three level settlement hierarchy, with the possibility of
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 BCE | 4300–4000 BCE | 4000–3600 BCE | 3600–3200 BCE | 3200–2750 BCE |
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Mogylna. 500–800 | ||||
Vesioly Kut. 5,000–7,500 | ||||
Nebelivka. 10,000–15,000 | ||||
Trypillia. 6,600–10,000 | ||||
Myropillya. 6,600–10,000 | ||||
Kharkivka. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Glubochek. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Pianeshkove. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Vil’khovets . 3,300–6,500
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Fedorovka, Ukraine . 3,300–6,500
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Tomashovka. 6,600–10,000 | ||||
Maydanets . 10,000–46,000
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Dobrovody. 10,000–16,200 | ||||
Talianki. 6,300–15,000–30,000 | ||||
Khrystynivka. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Volodymyrivka. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Peregonivka. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Vladyslavcyk. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Chychyrkozivka. 10,000–15,000 | ||||
Kvitky. 5,000–7,500 | ||||
Ksaverove. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Yaltushkiv. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Sushkivka. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Stina, Ukraine. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Romanivka. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Rozsokhuvatka. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Apolyanka. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Apolyanka. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Kosenivka. 3,300–6,500 | ||||
Kocherzhyntsi. 3,300–6,500 |
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Interconnected Cucuteni-Trypillian houses in the Maydanets settlement. Based on research done in 1996 by the Ukrainian scholar Mikhailo Videĭko.[6]
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Interior reconstruction of a Cucuteni-Trypillian house in the Archaeology Museum Piatra Neamț, Romania.
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A scale reproduction of a Cucuteni–Trypillia village.
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Reconstruction of public house - sanctuary from Maydanets.
Ultimately, the large scale of the Cucuteni-Trypillia settlements may have contributed to the downfall of their society, according to a theory that attributes their collapse to ecological factors.[20] Due to a dramatic worldwide climate change around 3200 BCE, the area of the Cucuteni-Trypillia 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-Trypillia farming society, and replaced by the more drought-appropriate pastoral nomadic society of the Proto-Indo-Europeans that followed.[21]
More recent research based on the geophysical survey and excavation of a number of the large settlements or 'megasites' suggests that these declined in part due to a process of social fissioning as emerging hierarchical decision-making models were rejected by communities politically organized into autonomous segmented lineages.[22]
See also
- Prehistoric Romania
- History of Ukraine
- Prehistory of Southeastern Europe
- Neolithic Europe
- Chalcolithic Europe
References
- ^ 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.
- OCLC 246601873.
- .
- ^ Müller, Johannes. "High precision Tripolye settlement plans, demographic estimations and settlement organization".
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ISBN 9781317247913.
- ^ OCLC 60616426. Retrieved 21 November 2009.
- ^ OCLC 52587844.
- ^ OCLC 56686499.
- OCLC 16546798.
- OCLC 309578661, archived from the originalon 2008-05-11
- )
- ^ OCLC 228808567.
- ISBN 9781317247920.
- ^ Videiko, M. Yu (2011). Trypillia culture proto-cities after 40 years of invistigations. Trypillian Civilization journal.
- ^ Rudenko, Anatoly (2014). "Trypillian giant settlements". academia.edu.
- ISBN 9781139461993.
- ISBN 9781780760605.
- ISSN 2155-871X.
- ^ Chapman, John; Videiko, Mikhail; Gaydarska, Bisserka; Burdo, Natalia; Hale, Duncan; Villis, Richard; Swann, Natalie; Thomas, Nathan; Edwards, Patricia; Blair, Andrew; Hayes, Ashley; 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).
- ISBN 978-0-691-05887-0.
- ISBN 1-881094-11-1.
- PMID 31553745.
External links
- Cucuteni Culture The French Government's Ministry of Culture's page on Cucuteni Culture (in English).