SETTLEMENT SYSTEM OF THE DNIEPER LEFT-BANK FOREST-STEPPE OF THE SECOND HALF OF 8th — MIDDLE OF 6th CENTURIES BCE

Dnieper Left-Bank Forest-Steppe region in the Early Iron Age was inhabited in several stages. For the first time, the agricultural population appears in the Zhabotyn period. Settlements that emerged at this time would become the centres of some settlement structures in the Early Scythian period. There are no burial sites of the settled population of Pre-Scythian times in the basin of Vorskla and Psel rivers. The few burials of nomads of Pre-Scythian time are synchronous to this group of settlements with ashhills. These assemblages, except Butenky, have no signs of militarization of the population of the Post-Zrubna culture, which have left in the Forest-Steppe. It’s likely that these two groups of populations coexisted peacefully, occupying separate ecological niches. The development of this population in relatively calm military and political conditions could have caused a demographic explosion and we have developed settlement structure in the middle of 7th century BCE. It represented by «cluster» of settlements with ashhills, which was united by a single burial mound necropolis. Today, it may be considered densely populated territory between Vorskla and Psel rivers with an agricultural population from the Dnieper Right-Bank region in the Early Scythian time. At that time, nomadic groups are emerging in the region, some of which participated in Asia Minor campaigns. Their burial monuments are mainly identified at the routes of their movement and places of frequent stops (winterings, etc.) — the Sula river region, north-western Vorskla river region (Kup’ievakha, Kolomak). The appearence of the settlement at the place of Western fortification of Bil’sk hillfort Western fortification also connected with the fact that exactly nomads probably chose this strategic place as a wintering at the intersection of communications roads. Thus, the ethnical and cultural history of the Dnieper Left-bank Forest-Steppe of that time connected with close interaction of Vorskla river’ farmers with different groups of Iranian-speaking nomads, which were the decisive force in the region and had control over the settled population.