Veneds Tribes of the Late Zarubyntsi Culture of Upper Dnieper in the 2nd–5th Centuries CE

Abstract

Nests of settlements were the basis of the research on family and tribal structure of the Slavs (Nevrs, Scythians-ploughmen, Scythians-farmers, and Veneds of the Zarubyntsi culture) of the 7th century BCE – 2nd century CE, which was published in the "Ukrainoznavstvo" journal (2022, №. 2–4). Mapping the nests of settlements on modern maps makes it possible to compare the changes in the location of the named Slavic tribes over time, which in fact offers a new method of sociocultural anthropology – the method of family-tribe geography of the Slavs–Ukrainians ethnogenesis. This method permits to detect the characteristic features of the social, cultural, and economic life of the clans and tribes of the Slavs in the chain of epochs with the help of various branches of science: archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, anthropology, as well as folklore, beliefs, law, crafts, and technologies. And the main thing is that this method allows you to move away from ethnically undefined "carriers of archaeological cultures", which are a relic of Soviet archaeology and do not allow studying the ancient history of families and peoples that inhabited the territory of Eastern Europe since the Palaeolithic. During the modern war, Ukrainians-farmers, for the Russians "Little Russians", are very energetically freeing themselves from the arms of nomads, herdsmen, "Great Russians". The artificially created unity of russian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian has already faded into the past. At the same time, interest in the ancient history of the Ukrainian people, which is hidden in archaeological sites and their interpretations, is constantly growing in the world.Our attention is drawn to Jordan's message about the various ethnonyms of the Veneds (the name by which the early Slavs were called), according to which the Veneds are divided into separate tribes that have names according to their families or places of residence. This message is confirmed in this article.Based on the research of archaeologists (largely based on L. Pobol's collection of monuments, which includes 517 late Zarubyntsi settlements), we have localised 50 nests settlements of Slavs-Veneds of the 2nd–5th centuries CE on the map of Belarus. (Fig. 1). It has been established that the tribes of the historical Slavs-Veneds of the late stage of the Zarubyntsi culture occupied the same territory of the Upper Dnipro where 36 tribes of the Zarubyntsi culture of the early stage of the 3rd century BCE lived – the 2nd century CE ("Ukrainian Studies," 2022, № 4, Fig. 14). So, there are reasons to express the opinion that the north-western part of the Veneds of the late Zarubyntsi culture – the ancestors of the current Belarusians – lived with the ancestors of the Ukrainians on the same territory for thousands of years, that is, they have a common history. And the Pripyat River did not divide our nations but united them for many centuries.