188 CHAPTER 4
a coincidence that the settlements with Volyntsevo pottery in the Voronezh
area came to be inhabited by Saltovo population as well.77 V. Petrukhin sees
the Volyntsevo pottery as Slavic with elements from the Saltovo pottery. In his
view, the Volyntsevo pottery indicates the area, inhabited by the Slavic tribes,
subject to Khazaria.78
The Pastyrskoe-Penkovka culture occupied a vast territory that extended
over the forest-steppe zone from the Prut to the Severski Donets, penetrating
the steppe zone up to the middle reaches of the Bug River and the Dnieper
Rapids. Its various regions experienced different cultural influences: Baltic,
Slavic and steppe. The economy of this culture was based on agriculture. Of
particular significance is the fact that the main handicraft centers (for example
the Pastyrskoe hillfort or Kantsirka, which specialized in pottery-making and
metalworking) were indisputably associated with the steppe population.79 It
is also important to bear in mind that the pottery in the final stage of develop-
ment of the Pastyrskoe hillfort (during the eighth century) comes close to the
Saltovo forms. S. Pletneva therefore accepts the existence of another version of
the Saltovo culture, which has not yet been studied.80
The strong presence of a steppe population in the Pastyrskoe-Penkovka
culture is evidenced by monuments, found north of the Dnieper Rapids. This
gives grounds for the distinction of a local, “nomadic” version of the culture,
as well as the assumption that the Kutrigurs settled down in the early seventh
century.81 The relation between the Pastyrskoe-Penkovka culture and some
Bulgar tribes is most clearly manifested in the appearance of its elements in
77 Vinnikov 1995, 120 and 145.
78 Petrukhin 2005, 73–74 and 2002, 43–44. O. Sukhobokov supports the theory, hardly suscep-
tible of proof, that the Volyntsevo pottery is closely related to the Slavic tribe Severians.
They are identical to the Severi, a tribe mentioned in the sources on Danube Bulgaria
that had returned to the forest-steppe zone around the Bititsa hillfort. There, together
with parts of the population of Great Bulgaria (the steppe influence in the culture), they
withstood the Khazar invasion (Sukhobokov 2000 and 2004, 163–167).
79 Goriunov 1981, 63–82; Rashev 2007a, 139–141.
80 Pletneva 1967, 7; see also Rashev 2007a, 140–141. The Pastyrskoe hillfort was burnt down
in the mid-eighth century, probably as a result of the presumed Khazar campaigns of
that time (Prikhodniuk 2000, 69). It is therefore hard to accept the assumption (upheld
by Romashov 2002–2003, 161, for example) that the Pastyrskoe hillfort was a center of the
Khazar Khaganate, in the fashion of the Bititsa hillfort.
81 Rashev 2007a, 141; Baranov and Maiko 1995, 77; on the basis of the Pastyrskoe pottery,
found in some Slavic settlements in Moldavia, Khynku and Rafailovich 1973, 165–167
assume that Bulgars settled there between the sixth and the seventh centuries. See also
Flerov 1996b, 33–37.