Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

the rise of the pontic steppe scythians
the outside world, offering forest products like livestock, leather, wax, and honey in
return for steppe horses, Greek pottery, and wine from Ionia and Lesbos. The community
thrived from the second half of the seventh century until about 500 bc, when
the settlement was destroyed. It was probably typical of many of the fortified settlements
of the forest steppe, remote from the world of the open steppe but productive
of the commodities that enabled the steppe Scythians to build their trading networks
with the Greeks.
One fortified settlement stands out by virtue of its enormous size—Bel’sk—sited
on a plateau 60 m above the river Vorskla, one of the tributaries of the Dnieper. The
enclosed area, roughly triangular in shape, is 4,000 hectares in extent, defended by
ramparts 34 km in total length. Embedded within the defensive system are two separate
forts, an east fort and a west fort, covering 62 and 72 hectares respectively. It
5.11 Bel’sk, the landscape today. Compare with 5.10. The fortifications can just be traced.
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