Eastern and Central Europe around 750 BC

Chernoles culture or Black Forest cultureEllen D. Reeder, Esther Jacobson, Scythian gold: treasures from ancient Ukraine. San Antonio Museum of Art - 1999 - p. 352 (Чорноліська культура) is an

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

archaeological unit dating ca. 1025–700 BC. It was located in the

forest-steppe A forest steppe is a temperate-climate ecotone and habitat type composed of grassland interspersed with areas of woodland or forest. Locations Forest steppe primarily occurs in a belt of forest steppes across northern Eurasia from the eastern ...

between the

Dniester The Dniester ( ) is a transboundary river in Eastern Europe. It runs first through Ukraine and then through Moldova (from which it more or less separates the breakaway territory of Transnistria), finally discharging into the Black Sea on Uk ...

and

Dnieper River The Dnieper or Dnepr ( ), also called Dnipro ( ), is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. Approximately long, with ...

s, in the Black Forest (Чорний ліс) of

Kirovohrad Oblast Kirovohrad Oblast (), also known as Kirovohradshchyna (), is an administrative divisions of Ukraine, oblast (''province'') in central Ukraine. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Kropyvnytskyi. The oblast's population is It is ...

in central

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

. This location corresponds to where

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

later placed his

Scythian The Scythians ( or ) or Scyths (, but note Scytho- () in composition) and sometimes also referred to as the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people who had migrated during the 9th to 8th centuries BC fr ...

ploughmen. From 200 BC, the culture was overrun by the arrival of Germanic and

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language *Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Foot ...

settlers to the region. Chernolesian settlements include open sites and also fortified sites surrounded by multiple banks and ditches. Houses were usually surface-dwellings and of substantial size, ~ 10 x 6 m. Artifacts found in settlements include stone and bronze axes, weapons, bronze ornaments, and iron tools. Cultivated wheat, barley, and millet were staples. The economy was agricultural, with stockbreeding. Bronze artefacts indicate significant contact with Scythian nomads, and finds of finer ceramic wares suggest contact with Thrace and

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal sea, marginal Mediterranean sea (oceanography), mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bound ...

Greek colonies. Inhabitants practised biritual burials: inhumation under barrows and cremation in urnfields (the latter predominated in later periods). Classical Chernoles period finished c. 500 BC, corresponding to a simplification in the material culture, interpreted to represent a pauperization due to the political domination of the forest-steppe communities by

Scythians The Scythians ( or ) or Scyths (, but note Scytho- () in composition) and sometimes also referred to as the Pontic Scythians, were an Ancient Iranian peoples, ancient Eastern Iranian languages, Eastern Iranian peoples, Iranian Eurasian noma ...

. In these latter stages, we see an increase in fortified settlements, perhaps representing a defensive measure against the nomads (with earthen ramparts, ditches and timber walls). Despite the difficulties, settlement density actually increases, and the socio-cultural traditions continued.

Notes

References

* James P. Mallory, "Chernoles Culture", ''Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture'', Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997.
Boris Rybakov on Chernoles Culture
(in Russian)
Boris Grekov on Chernoles Culture
{dead link, date=November 2016 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes (in Russian) Archaeological cultures of Europe Archaeological cultures in Ukraine Iron Age cultures of Europe