The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, also known as the Cucuteni culture or Trypillia culture, is a Neolithic–Chalcolithic archaeological culture ( 5050 to 2950 BC) of Southeast Europe. It extended from the Carpathian Mountains to the Dniester and Dnieper regions, centered on modern-day Moldova and covering substantial parts of western Ukraine and northeastern Romania, encompassing an area of , with a diameter of 500 km (300 mi; roughly from Kyiv in the northeast to Brașov in the southwest).
The majority of Cucuteni–Trypillia settlements were of small size, high density (spaced 3 to 4 kilometres apart), concentrated mainly in the Siret, Prut and Dniester river valleys. During its middle phase (c. 4100 to 3500 BC), populations belonging to the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture built some of the largest settlements in Eurasia, some of which contained as many as three thousand structures and were possibly inhabited by 20,000 to 46,000 people. The 'mega-sites' of the culture, which have been claimed to be early forms of cities, were the largest settlements in Eurasia, and possibly the world, dating to the 5th millennium BC. The population of the culture at its peak may have reached or exceeded one million people. The culture was wealthy and influential in Eneolithic Europe and the late Trypillia culture has been described by scholar Asko Parpola as thriving and populous during the Copper Age. It has been proposed that it was initially egalitarian and that the rise of inequality contributed to its downfall.
The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture had elaborately designed pottery made with the help of advanced kilns, advanced architectural techniques that allowed for the construction of large buildings, advanced agricultural practices, and developed metallurgy. The economy was based on an elaborate agricultural system, along with animal husbandry, with the inhabitants knowing how to grow plants that could withstand the ecological constraints of growth. Cultivation practices of the culture were important in the establishment of the cultural steppe in the present-day region as well.
The remains of a potter's wheel from the middle of the 5th millennium BC is the oldest potter's wheel ever found, predating evidence of similar wheels in Mesopotamia by several hundred years. The culture also has the oldest evidence for the existence of wheeled vehicles, in the form of miniature wheeled models, which predate any evidence of wheeled vehicles in Mesopotamia by several hundred years. Some archaeologists and historians have argued that wheeled vehicles were invented in the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture and spread to other areas from there, though this remains a controversial and disputed idea.
One of the most notable aspects of this culture was the periodic destruction of settlements, with each single-habitation site having a lifetime of roughly 60 to 80 years. The purpose of burning these settlements is a subject of debate among scholars; some of the settlements were reconstructed several times on top of earlier habitational levels, preserving the shape and the orientation of the older buildings. One location, the Poduri site in Romania, revealed thirteen habitation levels that were constructed on top of each other over many years.
Nomenclature
The culture was first named and described in 1884 by Teodor T. Burada, after Cucuteni, a village in Iași County, Moldavia region, Romania. After having seen ceramic fragments in the gravel used to maintain the road from Târgu Frumos to Iași, Burada investigated the quarry in Cucuteni from where the material was collected, where he found fragments of pottery and terracotta figurines.
In the spring of 1885, Burada and other scholars from Iași, including the poet Nicolae Beldiceanu and archeologists Grigore Butureanu, Dimitrie C. Butculescu and George Diamandy, began the first excavations at Cucuteni. Their findings were published in 1885 and 1889, and presented in two international conferences in 1889, both in Paris: at the International Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences by Butureanu and at a meeting of the Society of Anthropology of Paris by Diamandi.
At the same time, the first Ukrainian sites ascribed to the culture were discovered by Vincenc Chvojka (Vikentiy Khvoyka), a Czech-born Ukrainian archeologist, in Kyiv at Kyrylivska street 55. The year of his discoveries has been variously claimed as 1893, 1896 and 1887. In 1897 Vincenc Chvojka presented his findings at the 11th Congress of Archaeologists, which is considered the official date of the discovery of the Trypillia culture in Ukraine.
In the same year, similar artifacts were found in the village of Trypillia (), in Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. As a result, this culture became identified in Ukrainian publications, and later in Soviet Russia, as the 'Tripolie' (or 'Tripolye', from Russian Триполье), 'Tripolian' or 'Trypillia' culture.
Today, the finds from Romania and Ukraine, and those from Moldova, are recognised as belonging to the same cultural complex. It is generally called the Cucuteni culture in Romania and the Trypillia culture in Ukraine. In English, "Cucuteni–Tripolye culture" is most commonly used to refer to the whole culture, with the Ukrainian-derived term "Cucuteni–Trypillia culture" gaining currency following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Geography
The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture flourished in the territory of what is now Moldova, eastern and northeastern Romania, and parts of Western, Central, and Southern Ukraine.
The culture extended northeast from the Danube river basin around the Iron Gates to the Black Sea and the Dnieper. It encompassed the central Carpathian Mountains as well as the plains, steppe, and forest steppe on either side of the range. Its historical core lay around the middle to upper Dniester, the Podolian Upland. During the Atlantic and Subboreal climatic periods in which the culture flourished, Europe was at its warmest and moistest since the end of the last Ice Age, creating favorable conditions for agriculture in this region.
As of 2003, about 3,000 cultural sites had been identified, ranging from small villages to "vast settlements consisting of hundreds of dwellings surrounded by multiple ditches".
Chronology Periodization Traditionally separate schemes of periodization have been used for the Ukrainian Trypillia and Romanian Cucuteni variants of the culture. The Cucuteni scheme, proposed by the German archaeologist Hubert Schmidt in 1932, distinguished three cultures: Pre-Cucuteni, Cucuteni and Horodiștea–Foltești. They were further divided into phases (Pre-Cucuteni I–III and Cucuteni A and B).
The Ukrainian scheme was first developed by Tatiana Sergeyevna Passek in 1949 and divided the Trypillia culture into three main phases (A, B, and C) with further sub-phases (BI–II and CI–II). Initially based on informal ceramic seriation, both schemes have been extended and revised since first proposed, incorporating new data and formalised mathematical techniques for artifact seriation.
The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture is commonly divided into Early, Middle, and Late periods, with varying smaller sub-divisions marked by changes in settlement and material culture. A key point of contention lies in how these phases correspond to radiocarbon data. The following chart represents this most current interpretation:
• Early (Pre-Cucuteni I–III to Cucuteni A–B, Trypillia A to Trypillia BI–II): 5800 to 5000 BC• Middle (Cucuteni B, Trypillia BII to CI–II): 5000 to 3500 BC• Late (Horodiștea–Foltești, Trypillia CII): 3500 to 3000 BC
Early period (5800–5000 BC)
The roots of Cucuteni–Trypillia culture can be found in the Starčevo–Körös–Criș and Vinča cultures of the 6th to 5th millennia, with additional influence from the Bug–Dniester culture (6500–5000 BC). During the early period of its existence (in the fifth millennium BC), the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture was also influenced by the Linear Pottery culture from the north, and by the Boian culture from the south.
Through colonisation and acculturation from these other cultures, the formative Pre-Cucuteni/Trypillia A culture was established. Over the course of the fifth millennium, the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture expanded from its 'homeland' in the Prut–Siret region along the eastern foothills of the Carpathian Mountains into the basins and plains of the Dnieper and Southern Bug rivers of central Ukraine.
Settlements also developed in the southeastern stretches of the Carpathian Mountains, with the materials known locally as the Ariușd culture (see also: Prehistory of Transylvania). Most of the settlements were located close to rivers, with fewer settlements located on the plateaus. Most early dwellings took the form of pit-houses, though they were accompanied by an ever-increasing incidence of above-ground clay houses. The floors and hearths of these structures were made of clay, and the walls of clay-plastered wood or reeds. Roofing was made of thatched straw or reeds.
The inhabitants were involved with animal husbandry, agriculture, fishing and gathering. Wheat, rye and peas were grown. Tools included ploughs made of antler, stone, bone and sharpened sticks. The harvest was collected with scythes made of flint-inlaid blades. The grain was milled into flour by quern-stones. Women were involved in pottery, textile- and garment-making, and played a leading role in community life. Men hunted, herded the livestock, made tools from flint, bone and stone.
Of their livestock, cattle were the most important, with swine, sheep and goats playing lesser roles. The question of whether or not the horse was domesticated during this time of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture is disputed among historians; horse remains have been found in some of their settlements, but it is unclear whether these remains were from wild horses or domesticated ones.
Clay statues of women and amulets have been found dating to this period. Copper items, primarily bracelets, rings and hooks, are occasionally found as well. A hoard of a large number of copper items was discovered in the village of Cărbuna, Moldova, consisting primarily of items of jewelry, which were dated back to the beginning of the fifth millennium BC. Some historians have used this evidence to support the theory that a social stratification was present in early Cucuteni culture, but this is disputed by others.
Pottery remains from this early period are very rarely discovered; the remains that have been found indicate that the ceramics were used after being fired in a kiln. The outer colour of the pottery is a smoky grey, with raised and sunken relief decorations. Toward the end of this early Cucuteni–Trypillia period, the pottery begins to be painted before firing. The white-painting technique found on some of the pottery from this period was imported from the earlier and contemporary (5th millennium) Gumelnița–Karanovo culture. Historians point to this transition to kiln-fired, white-painted pottery as the turning point for when the Pre-Cucuteni culture ended and Cucuteni Phase (or Cucuteni–Trypillia culture) began.
Cucuteni and the neighbouring Gumelnița–Karanovo cultures seem to be largely contemporary; the "Cucuteni A phase seems to be very long (4600–4050) and covers the entire evolution of the Gumelnița–Karanovo A1, A2, B2 phases (maybe 4650–4050)."Cornelia-Magda Mantu (PDF file) Cucuteni–Tripolye Cultural Complex: Relations and Synchronisms with Other Contemporaneous Cultures from the Black Sea Area. Studia Antiqua et Archaeologica, VII, 2000
Middle period (5000–3500 BC)