NEW MATERIALS FOR ARCHAEOLOGICAL MAP OF THE WEST OF UKRAINE IN LATE BRONZE AGE – EARLY IRON AGE
Authors: BANDRIVSKYI Mykola 
Published: December 2024

In the first subsection of the article, the issue of tracing intercultural connections of the modern Western Ukrainian region on the basis of military archaeological finds is raised. For example, a bronze helmet from the Ternopil region, belonging to the extremely rare Oranienburg type, which was used in the south of Europe (for example, in Knossos) from the 15th century B. C. and in Central Europe during the 14th–13th centuries B. C. was introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. Considerable attention is paid to an exceptionally interesting and rare complex of elite horseman equipment, which includes items of protective armor (two bronze helmets of the proto-Etruscan comb type) and metal parts of a chariot harness which was discovered near Borshchiv, Ternopil region. It has been established that this and similar finds from the west of the Ukrainian Forest Steppe witnessed the possibility of closer contacts of the studied communities with the population of the Apennine Peninsula.

In the second subsection, the newly discovered sites of the West Podillia group are analyzed, which witnessed the unusual intensification of the eastern and western vectors of development in the material culture of the West Podillia population from the end of the 8th to the beginning of the 7th century B. C. In particular, considerable attention was paid to the complex of bronze vessels (two cast cauldrons, covered on top with a large bronze situla) from the village of Panivtsi of Borshchiv district, Ternopil region, mentioned in the author's 2014 monograph. It has been observed that particularly interesting archaeological materials that witnessed the mutual contacts of the carriers of the West Podillia group with the contemporary civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean, which were obtained by the West Podillia Hallstatt Archaeological Expedition, which, under the leadership of the author, resumed the study of the Early Iron Age sites near the village of Zalissya Borshchiv district, Ternopil region. The presence of exceptional samples of local gray clay ceramic ware were noted, in particular on a ring pallet and with L-shaped rims, and imported ware – fragments of archaic Greek ceramics with residues of white and purple paints, in particular in the form of a wide band, possibly from the shoulders of a Clazomenian amphora. A unique find was the discovery in Zalissya for the first time in Ukraine of a hub of a ceramic wheel with four broken spokes and a longitudinal hole for mounting on an axle, which could come (based on numerous analogies) from a four-wheeled ritual platform, which became especially widespread in the Hallstatt culture of the Upper Danube and the Eastern Alpine region. On the basis of a comprehensive analysis of the discovered grave goods, the ash pan in Zalissya can be dated back to the second half of the 7th – the first quarter of the 6th century B. C.

The last – the third – subsection is devoted to the problems of researching of sites of the Late La Tène period in the western region of Ukraine. Already known and new locations have been analyzed, which significantly correct the previous ideas about what happened in the Upper Dnister region and its adjacent areas after the disappearance of the latest sites of the Cherepyn-Lahodiv group. It is noted that so far the sights of Upper Dnister region of the Middle and Late La Tène periods do not have the usual correlate in the form of archaeological culture. Today – and this is especially emphasized in this subsection – we are dealing only with a group of local sites that cannot be included either in the Zarubinetska culture, or in the Lukashivka-Poienești culture, or in the Getae-Dacian culture, or in the Jastorf culture, or to Sarmatian. For a more convenient designation of the sites of this Upper Dnister group, it is proposed to use the name post-Cherepyn-Lahodiv, which would more accurately indicate their place in the local cultural-chronological scale, or sites of the Kolodrib type (Pre-Lypytsia horizon).

Keywords: Western Ukraine, Late Bronze Age, body armor, metal vessels, cauldrons, situla, Late Hallstatt period, Western Podillia group, La Tène period.