SCYTHIA FROM OCTAMASADES TO ATEAS (According to the Materials of the Dnieper Left Bank Forest Steppe)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of ethnocultural processes in the Dnipro Left Bank forest-steppe and some issues of the development of material culture in the last third of the 5th— 4th centuries BC. This period was characterized by the stabilization of the military-political situation and the ongoing development of the population in the south of Eastern Europe.
 Cluster analysis of burials allowed us to identify several groups. The first cluster characterizes the originality of the Belsk necropolis and its neighborhoods (clusters 1a, 2a, 3, 4). The second block united the burial of nomads who advanced along the Muravsky Shlyakh to the north (clusters 1b, 2c). Interestingly, that the program separated the elite complexes of the next chronological horizon (mid-third quarter of the 4th century BC) in wooden tombs with a southern orientation (clusters 5—6).
 In the development of the material culture of this period, three subgroups were identified. Subgroup 2c / group II (430/420—410s BC) is a transitional and reflects the material culture of the period of the completion of the formation of Scythia. The inventory of the burials, apart from innovations, still contains types of products that were typical for the Middle Scythian time.
 Subgroup 3a / group III (420/400—380/375 BC) corresponds with the time of Solokha’s burials. Material culture is actually completely innovative in relation to the Middle Scythian.
 Subgroup 3b / III group (380/365—360/350s BC) is difficult to separate and is a transitional from material culture such as Solokha burial to the one that would dominate, starting from the time of the burials in Tolstaya and Chmyreva Mogilas.
 For the agricultural population of the Forest-Steppe, the entry into Scythia no later than the end of the first third of the 5th century BC brought significant changes: the number of fortified settlements, settlements with ash hills decreased. Several fortifications continued active functioning and the seasonal settlements widely spread. All this happened against the background of an increase of the mobility of a part of the agricultural population and the infiltration of a part of the steppe population into the region.