F. MENOTTI & ALEKSEY G. KORVIN-PIOTROVSKIY (ed.). The Tripolye culture. Giant-settlements in Ukraine: formation, development and decline. viii+264 pages, 63 colour and b&w illustrations, 5 tables. 2012. Oxford & Oakville (CT): Oxbow; 978-1-84217-483-8 paperback £40.
Review by David W. Anthony
Anthropology Department, Hartwick College, USA
This useful and occasionally frustrating volume contains crucial new information in English on the giant-settlements of the Tripol'ye culture in Ukraine dated c. 3800–3300 BC—the largest human communities in the world at the time. Tal'ianki, the largest, was initially estimated at 450ha; magnetometry indicates some 2000 structures. Diachenko (2010) reduces Tal'ianki to 341ha, but this is still almost seven times larger than the central tell (50ha) at contemporary Middle Uruk Tell Brak in northern Mesopotamia. The sheer size of the Tripol'ye giant-settlements is puzzling in fourth-millennium-BC Europe, particularly in light of the absence of administrative structures, public works, fortification walls, specialised craft quarters, artefacts of administration (e.g. seals, writing), or any other indicators of centralised power. Yet each giant-settlement was clearly planned, since the houses were regularly arranged in concentric rings with their long axes pointing toward a central plaza. The giant-settlements have been called 'proto-cities', but the authors of this volume generally dismiss this term, citing the absence of urban indicators other than size. Though awkward in English, they adopt another hyphenated label: giant-settlements.
Comparative studies of these giant-settlements have not been previously published in English; this book fills that gap. It is an important and useful source for Western archaeologists. The editors—Francesco Menotti of Basel University and Aleksey G. Korvin-Piotrovskiy of the Institute of Archaeology in Kiev—have cooperated on excavations at Tal'ianki in 2008–2009 and jointly planned the present volume. Produced on glossy paper with good-quality colour 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 floo