Studies of a Settlement of Penkovskaya Culture in the Middle Reaches of the Seversky Donets River
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24852/2587-6112.2025.5.31.50Keywords:
archaeology, Seversky Donets, the Slavs, the Khazars, the Alans, the Proto-Bolgars, the Antes, settlement, furnace, ceramics, buildingsAbstract
The middle reaches of the Seversky Donets features a group of monuments belonging to Penkovskaya culture, some of which have been excavated. In 1990-1991 and 2005 such a settlement was studied at an archaeological site near Mayaki village, Slaviansk district of the Donetsk region. Foundation trenches of 5 buildings and a group of household structures were cleared, and the materials obtain allow dating the settlement to the 5th-7th centuries. This settlement was the earliest portion of a large monument which flourished in the Khazar period. The presence of a group of monuments which existed during the Migration and consecutively the Khazar period in the middle reaches of the Seversky Donets is an interesting phenomenon. At many settlements on this territory, layers of the Khazar period are bedded by a layer of Penkovskaya culture. Slavic influence is clearly traced on the monuments of Khazar period in the settlements of the buffer zone between steppe and forest steppe, and open spaces bordering this zone. Today, on the basis of the available archaeological material, it is difficult to determine how carriers of Slavic tradition got to the middle reaches of the Seversky Donets. Perhaps, this population moved from forest steppe as late as during the existence of the Khazar Khaganate. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that the carriers of Slavic tradition could be the indigenous population absorbed by the native people of steppe and North Caucasus region, who reached to the lands in question in the 8th century.
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