Materials of the Konstantinovskaya culture from the Temernitskoye fortified settlement

In 2017–2018 an Eneolithic settlement (attributed to the Konstantinovskaya culture) was discovered in the territory of the Temernitskoye fortified site in the center of Rostov-on-the-Don. The paper considers these materials represented mostly by ceramics and flint items (Fig. 2–4). Some of them were redeposited and found in a disturbed layer or household pits dating to first centuries AD. The remainder items were found in bottom and practically sterile layers over the virgin soil and in the fill of two identified Eneolithic ditches (Fig. 1). The only surviving section of the cultural layer was examined in the western part of the excavation area. It yielded two awls, enriched copper ore and several undecorated walls of shell-tempered vessels. Metal finds (two awls, a flat metal drop, copper ore) were analyzed by an X-ray microfluorescence spectrometer (Fig. 5). Based on technological, morphological and decorative characteristics of the ceramics, the Eneolithic layer of the Temernitskoye fortified settlement can be attributed to the early stage of the Konstantinovskaya culture of the Lower Don region. Besides the eponymic settlement, the materials retrieved from the lower horizon at the Liventsovka settlement and layer 6 from Razdorskaya I are the closest to the finds. A burial found in the necropolis of the Temernitskoye fortified settlement is chronologically close to the examined Eneolithic materials found at the Temernitskoye settlement.