Hlynske I Neolithic Site on the Southern Buh River (the Materials from the Investigations of 1955 and 1957). (In Ukrainian) (original) (raw)

Our knowledge of dating and periodisation of the Neolithic Buh-Dniester Culture in whole is based mainly on the results obtained from a few sequences from the Middle part of the South Buh river basin, excavated by Valentine Danylenko in 1949—1961. The author has begun to re-analyse and re-publish their collections and field documentation. This paper therefore describes and discusses the Hlynske I Neolithic settlement from this region. Neolithic finds were collected by P. Khavlyuk and V. Danylenko on the surface of a more than 100-meter part of the right lower terrace of the Buh River, to the south of the Hlynske village (Nemyriv district, Vinnitsa area) in 1955 and 1957. Additionally, a section of 35 meters in length was cleaned by them in 1957 and two small excavations (complex no. 1 and 2) were investigated at its opposite ends. The site today is flooded by waters of the Ladyzhin reservoir. The collection of finds from the site, stored in the Institute of Archaeology, NASU, consists of 160 fragments of 16 Neolithic vessels, seven fragments of seven vessels of later times, 82 flint artefacts, one bone tool and six animal bones. The Neolithic pottery is subdivided into three types: a) the Samchyntsi type with notched stamp impressions, made from a paste with an abundant coarse-grained mineral admixture — gruss of quartz and feldspar; b) the Pechera type with incised and channelled lines, impressions and pinches from finger nails, made from a paste tempered with a crushed cockleshell; c) a grey high quality pottery with knobs, the surface covered in a self-slip and burnished, similar to fine ware from the late sites of the Criş-Körös Culture. The stratigraphic sequence of pottery of these different types has not been recorded and the location of the pottery fragments, discovered in the surface collections, was described very roughly. However, the location of vessels of both the Pechera and Criş-like type were strictly ascertained around the stone fireplaces in the excavated homogeneous complex no. 1. This indicates these were synchronous and dates them approximately to the middle of the 6th millennium cal BC. Specific to the flint collection from this site, there is a lack of artefacts from the Kukrek Mesolithic culture, which has been recorded in the vast majority of sites with the pottery of Pechera type in the South Buh River area.