Dnieper rapids region

A small group of medieval archaeological sites of sedentary population, in the steppe Dnieper rapids region (Yatseva Balka, Petro-Svystunove, Oleksiivka, Perun and others), have long attracted the attention of researchers of different cultures. This has led to contradictory chronological, cultural, ethnic and political attributions.
Local pottery making tradition have been compared with pottery traditions of the Pastyrs’ke and Kantsyrka types, Saltiv culture, Slavic Raiky (Luka-Raikovets’ka) culture, the culture of the First Bulgarian Kingdom and “Balkan-Danubian” sites of the Dniester-Danubian interfluve. It was also considered as a local tradition within the framework of the culture of the Old Rus’ state. Researchers have suggested that the Slavic (Ulitchi tribe), “Alan-Bulgarian”, Alan or mixed Slavic-Nomad are the origin of the population. The various dating of the sites have proposed framework from 7th till 14th centuries. Such heterogeneity of opinions have not allowed this cultural group to
be placed in a real historical context.
The main problem is the selective publication of materials from the settlement in Yatseva valley (“Yatseva Balka”), which is the only one excavated within a large area. Analysis of field documentation and the collection of finds testifies that the so called “archaic” pottery of the “Southern Dnieper type” was combined in complexes of the Yatseva settlement with fragments of the “Ganos” type amphorae, “Middle Dnieper type” pottery of the 2nd half of the 13th – first half of the 15th centuries and Crimean glazed ware of the 14th centuries. Settlements of the Yatseva Balka type belonged to a small group of the population, poorly integrated into the economy of the Golden Horde.
The new data compels to exclude the group of Yatseva Balka from the context of the Early Medieval archeology and considers it in the context of complex processes of ethnic and cultural changes in the steppes of Eastern Europe in the Golden Horde period.