Neolithization of Kyiv Dnipro Region in the Light of New Research

Abstract

The issue of the Neolithization of Kyiv Dnipro region is being considered at a background of the Neolithic raising in Ukraine. Kukrek type flint industry and original Neolithic pottery having direct parallels in Buh-Dnister culture in the Buh River region are peculiar for the earliest Neolithic sites of Lazarivka type in Kyiv region. Based on earlier known and newly obtained materials, the authors come to the conclusion about the leading role of influences from the Balkan-Danube Neolithic in the Neolithization of the Right-Bank Ukraine and the Dnipro River middle region. The Right-Bank Ukraine Neolithization took part in the 6th millennium BC as a result of four waves of Neolithic migrants from the Danube River region.

The Hrebenyky traditions bearers were the first proto-Neolithic wave of migrants from the Balkans who left the sites of the same name culture in Odesa region of the 7th and the beginning of the 6th millennia BC (саl.). Flint inventory of this culture has direct parallels in the materials of the early Neolithic in Thessaly, as well as in flint assemblages of Krish culture.

The Krish culture population played a notable role in the Neolithization of Ukraine. Moving from Transylvania to the east in the second quarter of the 6th millennium BC, they reached Dnister region where they are represented by Sakarovka type sites. Owing to the synthesis of Krish Neolithic and local Kukrek traditions in about the middle of the 6th millennium BC, Buh-Dnister culture, the oldest Neolithic culture of Ukraine, appeared.

The population of Danube culture (Linear Pottery culture or LPC) can be called the third wave of Neolithic migrants into the Right Bank Ukraine; it moved from the Visla River upper region to Volyn, and to the Dnister River upper region, to Moldova, and to the region between the Buh and Dnister Rivers from there. The pressure of new Neolithic migrants from the west upon the Buh-Dnister population led to its movement in the north-eastern direction, into Dnipro River region of Kyiv and Cherkasy and perhaps into Nadporizzhia. These very processes of the second half of the 6th millennium BC led the beginning of the Neolithization of the Dnipro River middle region, including Kyiv Polissya.

Buh-Dnister population migration into Dnipro River region of Kyiv and Cherkasy especially strengthened at the end of the 6th millennium BC as a result of powerful pressure from the fourth wave of the Balkan-Danubian colonists, Cucuteni-Trypillya culture population, which started from Moldova territory the agricultural colonization of the Forest-Steppe zone between the Dnister and the Dnipro Rivers at this period. A final victory of producing economy in Right Bank Ukraine is related exactly with the Trypillians.

Overwhelming majority of the researchers believe that the Neolithization of the Danube River region and of Central Europe took part in procedure of their «Balkanization», in other words, spread of Neolithic innovations from the Balkans via the Danube Region took part by means of migrations of the Neolithic colonists to the north. It was colonization regime, in which the bearers of Hrebenyky, Danube (LPC), Buh-Dnister, and Cucuteni-Trypillya cultures spread in Right Bank Ukraine.