Zarubintsy culture

Named after a cremation cemetery at Zarubyntsi near Kaniv, excavated by Vikentiy Khvoyka in 1899, the culture is known from about 500 sites: small unfortified villages and hillforts on river bluffs, cremation burials in urns or pits, and brooches of La Tène type. Its people grew grain, kept livestock and traded with the Greek towns of the Black Sea coast, while their weapons and pottery show the influence of their steppe neighbours, the Scythians and Sarmatians.

The dates are archaeological and therefore approximate: the classic phase runs from the late 3rd century BC to the middle of the 1st century AD, and the “late Zarubintsy” sites of the later 1st and the 2nd century form a separate horizon, when groups moved south into the forest-steppe, perhaps because of a drier climate and the pressure of the Sarmatians. By the 3rd century these groups had turned into the Kyiv culture. Whether the Zarubintsy people spoke a Slavic, Baltic or another language is still debated.