Przeworsk tribes in the western Ukrainian lands in the first centuries AD (according to the materials of funeral sites)

Abstract

During the 1st-3rd centuries AD, waves of migrations repeatedly swept through the area of present-day western Ukraine. As evidenced by archaeological materials, migrations of Dacian and Przeworsk populations at the beginning of the 1st century AD and during the 2nd century led to the formation of the Lipitsa culture in this region, a cultural unit combining ethnic traits of both communities. Turbulent times of the Marcomannic Wars (166–180 AD) and a new wave of Przeworsk culture migration pushed the Lipitsa population out to Dacia. The distribution of archaeological sites from the late 2nd-3rd cent. AD shows that the Danube region was not the only direction of the Przeworsk tribes’ movement, as they also resettled and colonised new territories in the Volhynia, Podolia, and Polesia regions. Thus, the Przeworsk populations migrating to the western Ukraine in the first two centuries AD blended with the Dacian milieu, contributing to the creation of the Lipitsa culture. The Przeworsk populations of the second wave, which moved to the territory of Ukraine towards the end of the 2nd century and in the first half of the 3rd century AD, became the basis and a major component of a new cultural unit: the Chernyakhov culture of the Late Roman Period.