BORSHCHIV, UKRAINE—Haaretz reports that archaeologists excavating in Verteba Cave in western Ukraine have discovered a trove of five female ceramic figurines made some 5,000 years ago by the Neolithic and Copper Age people known to scholars as the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture. These people, known for their massive settlements that rivaled the earliest cities in Mesopotamia in size, flourished in what is now Ukraine, Romania, and Moldova from roughly 6,000 to 4,600 years ago. The last centuries of the Cucuteni-Trypillia era seem to have been marked by widespread violence, perhaps a result of encounters with groups entering the region from the steppe to the east. The five ceramic female figurines date to this late period, when its makers may have experienced dramatic social upheaval. Borshchiv Regional Museum archaeologist Mykhailo Sokhatskyi notes the figurines were found with wild boar tusks, which have previously been discovered only in very early Cucuteni-Trypillian sites. Perhaps, he suggests, the figurines' makers were returning to older traditions during a time of crisis. To learn more about Cucuteni-Trypillian figurines, go to “Ancient Tattoos: Cucuteni Ceramic Female Figurines.”
