Turbulent Ethnopolitical Processes in the Eastern Taurica in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries

This paper presents the results of archaeological researches allowing the one to reconstruct ethnopolitical processes in the eastern Taurica in the sixth and seventh centuries. By the sixth century, the eastern Crimean steppes were depopulated and used for seasonal migrations of the Hunnic tribes. The Byzantine Empire made a significant influence on the ethnopolitical processes in the Bosporos in the sixth and seventh centuries when annexed this country in 527/528. Archaeological researches supply scanty information about the urban buildings of the Bosporan capital in the sixth century. Alternative archaeological situation developed with the preserved Early Byzantine layers of the Bosporan town of Tyritake, where continuous many-year-long archaeological research uncovered large areas. According to the archaeological materials and a few epigraphic finds, Bosporan Greeks constituted the overwhelming majority of the population of Tyritake in the sixth century as before, being mostly the persons of moderate means, engaged in fishing and agricultural production, crafts and petty trade. After the raid of the Turks in 576, Bosporos and Tyritake declined, with only isolated residential houses reconstructed in certain areas in these towns; these houses lived to the third quarter of the seventh century when they were burned down by the Khazars. Bosporos constantly experienced the pressure from nomadic hordes, which, over the centuries, moved here and there, replacing each other, along the great tract of the steppes. The turbulence of ethnopolitical processes in the Eastern Taurica especially intensified in the Early Byzantine Period. Following the Khazar devastation, all the Bosporan settlements were depopulated, and the insignificant remnants of the former population concentrated in the fire-ravaged town of Bosporos, which for centuries became an out-of-the-way provincial town forming a part of different polities.