Usatove culture or Usatove archeological culture (Усатівська археологічна культура; Usativska arkheolohichna kultura). An archaeological culture of the Eneolithic–Early Bronze Age period spanning the 4th millennium BC in southeastern Europe. The culture takes its name from the Usatove-Velykyi Kuialnyk site excavated by Mykhailo Boltenko in Odesa oblast in 1921. This culture was concentrated in the northwest portion of the North Pontic (Black Sea) region and extended to the Boh River area in the northeast as well as along the west Pontic coast into Bulgarian Thrace in the south. Overall in the Pontic region, over 50 archaeological sites of Usatove are recognized, and the actual number could be twice that. The two largest Usatove sites in Ukraine are Usatove-Velykyi Kuialnyk and Maiaky, both containing kurhan and ground burials as well as evidence of ritual activity such as a network of ditches (at Maiaky) or shallow ‘corridors’ cut into limestone (at Usatove-Velykyi Kuialnyk).

Traditionally, Usatove has been viewed as a transitional culture, merging the traditions of Eneolithic Trypillian farmers and mobile steppe pastoralists. Although previously considered to be a late Trypillia culture group, the Usatove culture had developed enough distinctive cultural traits be considered a separate archeological entity. Usatove featured distinctive ceramics, indicating influences from Cucuteni-Trypillia and other cultures. Copper and bronze items found at Usatove sites link this culture with early Metal Age metallurgic traditions of the Ponto-Caspian area, while bronze finishing techniques as well as items of metallurgy byproducts and imports of exotic materials suggest trade and technical knowledge exchange extending into Anatolia, the Mediterranean area, and Transcaucasia.

Usatove sites yielded the oldest silver jewelry in Ukraine and some of the oldest in Europe. The finds of items of silver are concentrated in the kurhan cemetery at Usatove-Velykyi Kuialnyk and the Oleksandrivskyi kurhan on the coast of the Sukhyi Liman (estuary). Some researchers suggested that ornamental silver items such as temple rings found among the Usatove and other contemporaneous cultures’ artifacts in the North Pontic coast may have been produced locally from imported silver, possibly from the Eastern Mediterranean or Maikop-Novosvobodnoe communities in the Northern Caucasia.

Using comparative analysis of ceramic imports from securely dated periods and radiometrically dating charcoal, pottery, and animal bone from Usatove sites, researchers have established a chronology for Usatove generally aligning with a period spanning approximately 3650 to 2700 BC. However, some sites have yielded dates as early as the end of the 6th millennium BC and as late as the last quarter of the 3rd millennium BC. Furthermore, AMS radiocarbon dates obtained from Usatove-attributed human remains at the Maiaky site do not align with radiometric dates from charcoal and pottery from the same site. This discrepancy has been attributed to radiocarbon reservoir effect (RE) that results from aquatic resource-based diet. Archaeological reports indicate a substantial presence of aquatic animals at the Maiaky and Usatove-Velykyi Kuialnyk sites. Considering the reservoir age offsets established for the coastal northern Black Sea region, the Usatove AMS-based chronology was calibrated to approximately 3800–3100 BC. The RE-adjusted chronological range for Usatove, as determined from samples collected from Maiaky, indicates that the Usatove population emerged within three generations after the steppe hiatus period, characterized by a relative scarcity of archaeological monuments in the North Pontic steppe at the turn of the 4th millennium BC, and persisted past the onset of the expansion of the Yamna archeological culture complex after ca 3300 BC.

The two largest Usatove sites in Ukraine—Usatove-Velykyi Kuialnyk and Maiaky—both feature a network of ditches/corridors containing traces of ritual activity such as broken pottery and figurines, as well as animal bones. They also contain human burials, dominated by female and immature/subadult interments (a 4:1 female to male ratio among adult burials), both within and outside the ditch/corridor network, as well as under kurhans and in ground burials. Some researchers consider Usatove-Velykyi Kuialnyk to be an industrial center of salt procurement from the brackish Khadzhybei Estuary connected to a ritual sanctuary, while Maiaky had a largely ritual purpose, and was possibly connected with salt procurement activity at the Sukhyi Estuary 30 km to the south. The majority of kurhans in the northwest Pontic containing Usatove burials were erected at a confluence of rivers and brackish estuaries.

Archaeogenetic analysis of human remains from Maiaky and Usatove-Velykyi Kuialnyk indicates that genetic ancestry of Usatove was formed ca. 4600–4400 BC from an even mix of ancestries from the Lower Volga and the Caucasus (CLV), on the one hand, and the Trypillia culture, on the other. A related to Usatove geographically and genetically overlapping archaeological group Cernavodă I formed from a similar genetic substrate. While the chronological age of the Usatove ancestry formation is 800–1000 years earlier than the beginning of Usatove as concluded by archaeology and based on RE-adjusted AMS radiocarbon dates, it coincides with the initial appearance of the Trypillians in the Northwest Pontic steppe at ca. 4600 BC, followed by the arrival of CLV migrants in the region after ca. 4400 BC. A comparable chronological separation is observed between the establishment of the Yamna genetic ancestry and the appearance of the Yamna archeological culture complex in archaeological record. It has been suggested that Usatove formed as an alliance between CLV and Trypillia with a purpose of exerting control over the crossing points of trade networks in the Balkan-Carpathian region and those leading across the North Pontic to the Caucasus Mountains and adjacent areas. As trade slowed down by the end of the 5th millennium BC due to changing climate followed by a depopulation of the west Pontic metallurgical and salt producing centers, Usatove may have shifted its economic focus on salt trade with Trypillians, particularly with Trypillian megasites to the north of Usatove-Velykyi Kuialnyk, on the boundary between the steppe and forest-steppe. Perhaps a steady supply of salt was one of key reasons the megasites were able to maintain intensive crop and livestock practices and sustain a large population of sedentary farmers congregating within a limited area. The end of the warm Atlantic period ca. 3600 BC led to a decline of the megasites, reciprocally affecting Usatove, where the economic focus subsequently shifted towards nomadic pastoralism. By the end of the 4th millennium BC, the Yamna culture took over Usatove sites such as Maiaky, eventually pushing the remaining Usatove groups to the western corner of the Budzhak steppe. Researchers see Usatove material culture influences at sites in Eastern Balkans such as Durankulak and Diadovo and connect these to migrations of the Usatove population along the west Pontic coast. An Usatove outpost in the Boh River area (the Gard archaeological complex) continued into the early part of the 3rd millennium BC. Usatove genetic ancestry survived in various parts of the North and West Pontic until the middle of the 3rd millennium BC.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Patokova, E. Usatovskoie poseleniie i mogil'niki (Kyiv 1979)
Patokova, E., Petrenko, V., Burdo, N., Polischuk, L. Pamiatniki Tripol'skoi kul'tury v severo-zapadnom Prichernomor'e (Kyiv 1989)
Ivanova, S. ‘Prirodnyie resursy i ekonomika drevnikh obshchestv.’ Stratum Plus no. 2 (2010)
Petrenko, V. ‘Usatovskaia kul'tura,’ in I. Bruiako; T. Samoilova (eds.) Drevniie kul'tury severo-zapadnogo Prichernomor'ia (Odesa 2013)
Manzura, I. ‘History Carved by the Dagger: The Society of the Usatove Culture in the Fourth Millennium BC,’ in S. Hansen (ed.). Repräsentationen Der Macht: Beiträge Des Festkolloquiums Zu Ehren Des 65 Geburtstags von Blagoje Govedarica (Wiesbaden 2020)
Nikitin, Alexey G., Ivanova, Svitlana. ‘The Origins and Chronology of the Usatove Culture’ Archaeologia Lituana 23 (2022)
Nikitin, Alexey G., et al. ‘Radiocarbon Dating and Stable Isotope Analysis of Human Remains from the Usatove Culture Site of Mayaky in Ukraine.’ SSRN Electronic Journal (2023), https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4236123
Nikitin, Alexey G. et al. ‘A Genomic History of the North Pontic Region from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age,’ Nature 639 (2025)

Alexey G. Nikitin

[This article was updated in 2025.]