r 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 three largest settlements probably represent consecutive relocations, each moving c. 12–15km north-east along the edge of the steppe/forest-steppe ecotone, with a community growing to around 10 000–14 000 people, from Dobrovodi (250ha) to Tal'ianki (450ha) to Maidanets'ke (270ha), over about 150–200 years. (Diachenko (2010) reduces the size estimates of these sites to 211ha, 341ha and 214ha respectively). Ryzhov contributes a related study of the relative chronology of the giant-settlements based on typological evidence, assuming that migrations between Tripol'ye regions are the explanation for observed changes in ceramic style, a conception broadly shared by the other contributors. Ryzhov's stylistic descriptions are greatly expanded in his second article, a typology of the spatial and chronological evolution of Tripol'ye pottery styles. This attention to style has potential advantages for fine-grained social analysis, though this specific use of style is generally neglected. Ryzhov and Kruts agree that changes in ceramic styles coinciding with the growth of the giant-settlements indicate that these sites began with a significant infusion of new people who moved from the Dniester-Prut region—where these styles originated—to the South Bug River at c. 3800 BC. The local Tripol'ye population retained its regional ceramic styles only in sites near the Dnieper, where they became an 'eastern Tripol'ye' group with smaller site sizes that resisted assimilation by the 'western Tripol'ye' group in the giant-settlements.
The last of the five articles is by Diachenko, the archaeologist responsible for the introduction of improved mathematical methods and demographic models to Tripol'ye archaeology. His recalculated site areas for the giant-settlements are quoted above (Diachenko 2010); in the current book he uses only broad size categories. His statistic that 78.4–100 per cent of the structures at Maidanets'ke were occupied at the same time (p. 123) confirms the contemporaneity of the entire settled area. He adds useful dat