 photographs, the book contains topical articles by nine leading Ukrainian archaeologists, among whom three (Kruts, Ryzhov and Korvin-Piotrovskiy) have authored or co-authored six of the ten articles. No Western scholars are included after Menotti's brief introduction. The authors are among the leading Ukrainian archaeologists who work on Tripol'ye sites. Videiko, who has worked at the giant-settlements of Maidanets'ke and Nebelivka (with John Chapman), does not contribute. As Kruts and Korvin-Piotrovskiy disagree with Videiko on some issues cited in this volume, the book presents a Tal'ianki-centred perspective. Topical chapters cover house construction, pottery styles, flint tools, settlement systems, migrations and radiocarbon chronology, as well as overviews of the classic and late phases of the Tripol'ye culture, though summaries of zooarchaeological and palaeobotanical evidence are unfortunately absent.
Korvin-Piotrovskiy provides an opening overview of the problems addressed in contemporary Tripol'ye archaeology in Ukraine. He notes that the giant-settlements were relatively few, occupied a very limited territory on the steppe border, and were not urban, because they contained no craft quarters or monumental buildings. He co-authors a second chapter describing an experiment in Tripol'ye house construction, destruction, and subsequent excavation [see also Hamerow's review of Tipper in this review section]. The excavated reconstruction that most resembles a Tripol'ye archaeological deposit was a two-level house comprising a lower storey (for storage?) with an earth floor and log walls, supporting a clay-on-timber-floored wattle-and-daub residential superstructure with a thatched roof. To produce the expected archaeological signature, the team had to fill the house with timber fuel and burn it down—a ritual act of abandonment also documented in Vinca houses. Chernovol's chapter on the houses of the giant-settlements makes clear how complex and heavy these two-storey structures were. The upper residential floor contained a domed clay oven, clay benches, clay troughs for flour, circular clay 'altars', interior wall paintings on clay, and clay-surfaced timber floors, with a balcony-entrance projecting from the short end of the house, probably approached by ladder. Chernovol notes that Complex M at Maidanets'ke contained an unusually large structure (7 x 24m) with distinctive internal clay architectural details, perhaps an administrative building. Current excavations at Nebelivka by Chapman and Videiko have discovered another distinctive structure double or triple this size.
Rassamakin's article on radiocarbon chronology provides a valuable list of 202 radiocarbon dates for Cucuteni-Tripol'ye sites. He emphasises the continuing challenge of creating a radiocarbon chronology that links all neighbouring synchronous cultural chronologies—a task that is made more difficult, he notes (p. 22), by anomalous dates sometimes produced by the Kiev radiocarbon lab in split samples also dated by Berlin or Oxford. In the section on the chronology of the giant-settlements, Table 2.4 (p. 53), dates 17–19 are from Tal'ianki, not Maidanets'ke as listed. These three mislabelled dates were the subject of a study by Rassamakin and Menotti (2011) arguing that they indicate two phases of occupation at Tal'ianki—a claim not recognised in Kruts' short chronology (p. 73) of 50 years for the entire occupation of the site.
Five articles analyse the archaeology of the giant-settlements. Two are by Kruts: the first is an overview of chronological development and settlement systems, the second an overview of the post-giant-settlement era of decline and disappearance. Kruts weighs different theories on the causes of the giant-settlements, and concludes that the evidence supports defensive concentrations, probably against steppe pastoralists who penetrated the forest-steppe after Tripol'ye settlements had largely deforested it, although the botanical/faunal evidence for deforestation is not given. Ceramic typology and radiocarbon dates suggest that the 