Why is ‘the Buh-Dniester culture’ a poor heuristic? -Dmytro Kiosak

Why is ‘the Buh-Dniester culture’ a poor heuristic?
Dmytro Kiosak, Mechnikov National University, Odesa / Montaigne University, Bordeaux
30th May 2024
16.00 CET (Rome, Paris, Berlin / GMT+2)
17.00 (İstanbul, Athens / GMT+3)
10.00 (New York / GMT-4)
In Eastern Europe, particularly in Ukraine, the precise timing of the Neolithic era is a subject of ongoing debate despite extensive historical research. This topic continues to be a focal point of lively discussions, reflecting a broader disagreement regarding the character, origins, and progression of Ukraine's initial Neolithic period. In fact, at times, the Neolithic is defined solely by the presence of pottery. The emergence of pottery in Ukraine is documented as early as the latter part of the 7th millennium BCE or the early 6th millennium BCE. Similarly, the spread of cultivated crops and domesticated animals remains a complex puzzle in South-West Ukraine, with scholars still striving to comprehend it.
The topic of the time and nature of the first neolithisation of a region always has a certain nationalistic flavour. After all, the originality and uniqueness, the historical primacy of the achievements of one's own culture is something that never disappears from the public demand (Trigger, 1990). Therefore, certain concepts regarding the neolithisation of the Carpathian-Danube region require preliminary deconstruction. Such misleading concepts, in my opinion, include the idea of the "Buh-Dniester culture" as a social unity with one origin and continuous development over time for more than a millennium.
The demolition of the concept of a unified culture for early pottery-bearing groups of the region between Carpathians and the Southern Buh river opens a new fruitful direction of research - namely, search for diversity of the material culture expressions which would surpass artificial limits of "Buh-Dniester" culture.