NEW DATA TO THE CHRONOLOGY AND HISTORY OF THE EARLY NOMADS OF NORTHERN PART OF RIGHT-BANK DNIEPER STEPPE

Archaeological sites as well as historical sources include not only classical antiquities — settlements, burials or hoards. Any ancient artefact, if it is reliably ‘tied’ to the place of discovery, i. e. has a geographical localization, may well qualify for the above-mentioned role. The accidental finds, discovered in the places where there are no reliable settlements or funerary sites, are also of particular importance. In this case, they are, in fact, the only indicators of the presence of some population in a certain region. It is to this category of finds that the fragmented bronze bits belong, found in 4 sites in the northern part of the Dnieper Steppe Right Bank, in the north of Mykolaiv and south of Kirovohrad regions. One item is the almost complete bits with external loops in the form of a connected ring and a «small stirrup» (Darnitsa village, north of Mykolaiv region). They belong to the pre-Scythian type and with the help of a wide range of Eurasian analogies can be dated to the second half of the 8th — early 7th centuries BC and correlated with the pre-Scythian nomads — Cimmerians. Three other finds (all in the south of Kirovohrad region: Petrivka, Borysivka, Bobrinets Museum of Local Lore) are parts of stirrup-shape bits with three protrusions on the tread of the ‘stirrup’. Such bits were widespread among the nomads of Eurasia, including the Scythians in the archaic period. Their date, according to numerous North Pontic (Steppe-Forest) and Caucasian analogues, is the 7th — first half of the 6th centuries BC. The principal point is that, if in the above territory, single sites of the Pre-Scythian time (Novocherkassk type) were recorded earlier (for example, the inlet grave in the barrow near the village of Bohdanivka), this cannot be said about the Early Scythian antiquities. The few Scythian barrows known here date only to the 5th—4th centuries BC. The published finds of horse harness of the Early Scythian period eliminate this lacuna, unambiguously testifying to the penetration of the Nomads into this micro-region. Perhaps, it was the stage of development of some microregions of the northern Steppe by Early Scythian nomads as a springboard for further advances into the depths of the forest-steppe.