Ceramic Vessel From Mound Near Zolne Village in the Crimea

Abstract

The article deals with ceramic handmade vessel from a burial mound near Zolne village (mound No. 1, burial No. 10) in the central foothills of the Crimea. Partially reconstructed fragments were found in the Scientific Funds of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. After the graphic reconstruction, it became clear that the vessel differs from the drawing given by A. A. Shchepynskyi, who was the author of the excavations. Both the vessel and the conditions of its discovery are analyzed; analogies in other complexes of the Crimea are given. Based on the typological analysis, the vessel is referred to one of the leading types of ceramics of the Kyzyl-Koba culture of the V-UB horizon, selected on Uch-Bash materials, dated from the beginning of the Taurian period. In addition, there are synchronous burial complexes, identical to the burial in Zolne mound. In addition to ceramics, chronological cluster of the warrior burial in Zolne mound is characterized by the bronze arrowheads of the Novocherkassk-type, known also at Uch-Bash in the layer of destruction of the previous IV-UB horizon. It should also be noted that in the inventory of the burial No. 10 of Zolne mound there is a whetstone with a hole for hanging, made from sandstone. It corresponds typologically to the whetstones from the horizon V-UB of Uch-Bash. The chronology of all finds of vases of this type generally fits into the second half of the VIII — early VII c. BC. Analysis of their context raises many questions not only archaeological, but also historical, namely, in connection with which events, firstly, the soldier was buried in Zolne mound, and secondly, why in his burial as an inventory item there was placed a vessel used by population of the Eastern and Central foothills of the Crimea. The sequence of events can now be reproduced as follows. At the time of the demise of the fortified settlement of Uch-Bash in the South-Western Crimea in the foothills of the Crimea a new cultural complex may have been already formed, which we characterize as the V-UB horizon. Its formation and functioning are connected with the arrival of a new nomadic horde, which is associated with Novocherkassk monuments, having earlier analogies on the eastern monuments of the Northern Black Sea coast, where they probably came from. The asynchrony of the emergence of a new complex of material culture in the Crimean foothills and Uch-Bash, where it appears some time after the layer of fire and destruction, shows that Uch-Bash both in the late Pre-Tauric and in the early Pre-Tauric periods, all was more focused on sea connections and waterways than on land, in contrast to the central group of sites of the Kyzyl-Koba culture in the basin of the Salgir River.