The emergence of the Bel'sk settlement complex:landscape, population histories, and social structure

Summary

During the Pontic Iron Age, ca. 700-300 BCE, large fortified settlement complexes that encompass areas between 100 ha and 5,000 ha emerged along the forest-steppe and steppe boundary in Ukraine. At Bel'sk, the largest settlement complex of its kind with three separate settlements were linked by a fortification wall spanning 33 kilometers, delineating a massive urban internal space from its hinterlands. Despite one hundred years of periodic archaeological investigation, much about the Bel'sk settlement complex remains an enigma, including it's role in Pontic inter-regional or more localized socio-economic dynamics.

A collaborative Ukrainian-American-Austrian team, funded by the National Geographic Society, began new work at Bel'sk focusing on the analysis of remotely sensed imagery that allow us to explore population levels for each settlement, the construction of the fortifications, and the agro-pastoral land needed to support the settlement complex. Isotopic analyses of human and animal remains recovered from the cemeteries located at Bel'sk and beyond were also conducted to investigate the degree of mobility in human and animal populations present. In this paper, we discuss the important socio-economic role of settlement complexes like Bel'sk in the movement of people and livestock in and out of the Pontic forest-steppe/steppe regions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• What to Do with "Megasites" in Prehistory? Further Exploring the "Megasite" Conundrum

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15067