The Trade Route from the Black Sea to the Oka Area from the Late Fourth to Seventh Centuries

This article suggests a reconstruction of the late fourth- to seventh-century trade route connecting the Northern Black Sea Area and the Oka River basin. The starting and ending points of the route and the location of the support bases have been determined. These bases were trade and industrial centres where mixed population lived and direct contacts of immigrants from the south of Eastern Europe (Crimea, Caucasus, and Black Sea area) and the north (Oka river area) were documented. In the late fourth and fifth centuries, the route in question started in Tanais in the lower reaches of the Don; its intermediate centers were the settlements in the Upper Don area on the Ostraia bend in the cultural group of the Chertovitskoe – Zamiatino type; the final point was the settlement Upa-Krivoluch’e on the outskirts of the modern city of Tula in the area of the Moshchiny culture. In the late fifth or early sixth century, unclear catastrophe happened to the Upper Don region. In result, the trade and industrial centres on the Ostraia bend of the Don ceased to exist. The late fifth- and sixth-century cemeteries also disappeared. There was an outflow of the population from the Don to the middle and upper Voronezh area. In this region, the Upper Voronezh cultural group developed. The intermediate center base moved from the Ostraia bend of the Don to the Upper Voronezh area (to the complex of settlements near the modern village of Staevo). The trade route continued to exist, but its location changed. In the sixth and seventh centuries, it started on the Bosporos, passed through the Upper Voronezh area, and finished somewhere on the territory of the Riazan’ – Oka cemeteries culture. It is still possible that one of the branches of this route ended at the Samara bend of the Volga.