The history of investigations of the Saltovo-Mayatsk culture settlements: old paradigms and new approaches

This article contains a historiographical review devoted to the development of ideas regarding settlement archaeology of the Early Medieval period in Southern Russia. It examines the history of the study of dwelling sites of the Saltovo-Mayatsk culture situated in the forest-steppe zone and genetically linked with the population of the Northern Caucasus. The paper presents a detailed analysis of the main views regarding the origin and emergence of various types of settlement typical of the traditional cultural-historical approach to archaeological research and also of the methods which appeared in the 1980s and 1990s and took shape under the influence of «New Archaeology» in Great Britain and the USA.