«BUDINIA OR SCYTHIA?» THE ETHNIC AND CULTURAL BELONGING OF THE MIDDLE DON POPULATION DURING 5th—4th centuries BC

Abstract

For over half a century (since the end of the 1950s), the Scythology has been discussing the location of the Scythian and non-scythian tribes mentioned by Herodotus on a geographical map. After the Scythian-Sarmatian conference in 1952 and the report of B. N. Grakov and A. I. Melyukova, most of archaeologists supported the idea that only the Black Sea steppe belonged to the Scythians, and non-scythian peoples and tribes inhabited the forest-steppe regions of the Northern Black Sea region. In this regard monuments on the Middle Don dated V—IV centuries BC began to be considered Budinia, belonging to the Budinians and Gelonians. P. D. Lieberov interpreted the Budinians as Finno-Ugric tribes. Archaeological research of the last decades (including the widespread use of the methods of the natural sciences) made it possible to revise this idea and return to the M. I. Rostovtsev and A. I. Terenozhkin point of view about the existence of a single large Scythia covering in the VII—IV centuries BC all the Northern Pontic (steppe and forest-steppe) from the Danube to the Don.