The Neolithization in southern Eastern Europe
»The Neolithization in southern Eastern Europe«
Dmytro Kiosak | Université Bordeaux Montaigne
In southern Eastern Europe, Neolithization was quite different from that elsewhere. Here, a significant mass of the local population, carriers of the genetic complex of "Eastern hunter-gatherers", was preserved up to the Bronze Age (Allentoft et al. 2024). The latter seems to have acquired agriculture and cattle breeding at least in the fifth millennium BCE through the diffusion of ideas (Motuzaite-Matuzeviciute 2020). This fact needs to be explained in the pan-European context of Neolithization, mainly through migration (Guilaine 2012). The peculiarities of Eastern European Neolithic allow us to better understand the nature of early agricultural societies and the character of their dispersal in Europe as a whole.
Thus, there was a frontier between easternmost early farming societies and ceramic hunter-gatherer groups in southern Eastern Europe. Since at least 1987, D.Ja Telegin delineated two cultural "zones" in southern Eastern Europe (Ukraine and Moldova): one linked to local hunter-gatherer heritage and the other including early farming societies of Balkan and Central European origin (Telegin 1987). The latter zone was formed when the early farmers of Criş culture entered the region between Carpathians and Dniester river around 5800-5700 cal BCE. The Neolithization, spanning from 5250-5100 BCE, gradually extended across western Ukraine, Podillia and Volhynia, reaching the rivers of Southern Buh and Teterev with the expansion of Linear Pottery Culture. LPC groups established over 250 sites by 5100 BCE. Subsequently, the early Trypillia-Precucuteni people undertook the third wave of agricultural dispersal during the second quarter of the fifth millennium BCE. Furthermore, Trypillia – Cucuteni groups settled most of Ukraine to the west of the Dnieper River starting from 4250 BCE, crossing the Dnieper River and settling in the Northern Ukrainian lowlands by 3600 BCE.
Some groups of sites (in particular ‘Buh-Dniester culture’) in the hunter-gatherers' zone were characterized as a 'transitional society' or 'hunters in availability phase’ (Zvelebil, Lillie 2000). Certain pottery-bearing foragers’ groups were classified as hunters with some herding, based on archaeozoological analysis (Benecke 1997). Recent works, including the author's contributions on Criş, LPC, Early Trypillia, and Trypillia B1 clarified the limits of early farming dispersals at certain moments in time.