The Dnieper River Region as a Crossroad of Babyne Cultures Area

Abstract

In the Middle and Lower Dnieper Basin during the transition period from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age the areas of several cultures, local variants and groups of the Babyne Cultural Circle were intersected. Taking into account some asynchronity of Babyne cultural-taxonomic units it is reliable to speak about the partial overlapping of their areas only for the time of their coexistence in the region during the Late Babyne period. The main neighbours in the Dnieper Basin region are two Babyne cultures — the Dnieper-Don (DDBC) and the Dnieper-Prut (DPBC), in its two local variants (Dnieper-Dniester and Dnieper-Bug). Also in the Lower Dnieper Area (between Rapids region and Syvash), the range of the Evpatorian group (its continental Hromov subgroup) is partially overlaid on the Dnieper-Dniester variant of the DPBC. Sometimes the border between neighbouring Babyne cultures / groups is delineated as a narrow contact zone (up to 30—40 km), within the sites of both groups could have been met. In other cases the contact zone looks very wide (up to 250 km). It seems that the last result reflects not the objective picture but the imperfection of the cultural differentiation method of the late DDBC burials and the Dnieper-Dniester variant of the DPBC, which also reflected on the cartography of appropriate assemblages. The solution of this problem depends both on the accumulation of a data base, first of all for poorly explored areas, and the identification of additional criteria for the differentiation of culturally related assemblages.