Mapping the Settlements of Slavic Tribes of the Zarubyntsi Culture of the 3rd Century BC — 2nd Century AD

Abstract

Ethnological studies of the Slavic tribes of the Nevrians, Scythians-farmers and Scythians-ploughmen of the 7th–3rd centuries BC in the Middle and Upper Dnieper region on the territory of Ukraine, Belarus and the Russian Federation, which were published in the previous issues of the "Ukrainoznavstvo" journal, approved a new method of socio-cultural anthropology – the method of tribal geography. It was established that in the social life of East Slavic tribes, the main participant was the clan, and not the patriarchal family, family or neighborhood community. Despite the appearance of the works of Bachofen, McLennan, Morgan, Kovalevsky, Kosven and other researchers, Soviet ideas about the patriarchal family as the embryo of society have not yet disappeared in archeology, and the relationship to the community, family and tribe has not yet changed. Archaeologists are still investigating the ethnically undefined bearers of archaeological cultures.But archaeologists know that the tribal system and the placement of ancestral settlements in nests existed on all continents of the planet since the Paleolithic era. Therefore, tribal geography opens up new opportunities for researching the lands inhabited by Slavic tribes - the ancestors of the Ukrainian people, which is of great interest all over the world. Elements of historical geography in the study of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs at the beginning of the 20th century used by V. Khvoika, researching about 500 settlements of different times in Ukraine. L. Niederle developed a map of the resettlement of Slavic tribes from the areas of initial residence, which, according to B. Rybakov's observations, corresponds to the main contours of the territory of the settlement of the Slavs for two millennia. Systematic cartographic studies of the settlements of the Slavic tribes of the Upper Dnieper region were carried out by L. Pobol, a supporter of V. Khvoika's autochthonous theory of the origin of the Slavs. The St. Petersburg school of archaeologists (M. Shchukin, V. Yeremenko, K. Kasparova), which adheres to the migration theory, still opposes the autochthonous theory. Ukrainian researcher S. Pachkova successfully proves the fallacy of the migration theory. We have collected the material of the nest cluster of Zarubyntsi culture settlements in the period of the 3rd century BC – 2nd century AD on modern maps at a scale of 1:850,000 for Belarus and 1:250,000 for Ukraine and the Russian Federation and it confirms the autochthonous theory of the origin of the Slavs and, including, the autochthonousness of the Ukrainian people. These and subsequent similar studies make it possible to reveal the characteristic features of the ethnogenesis of Ukrainian Slavs from the annalistic tribes of Kievan Rus to the Iron, Bronze, and Copper Ages.