The Khazar Economy: Economic Integration or Disintegration? 191
S. Pletneva regards the hoard from Malaia Pereshchepina as evidence of
the Bulgars’ deep penetration into the forest-steppe zone. They participated
directly in the creation of the Pastyrskoe-Penkovka culture.88
It can be concluded that the beginnings of the mixed agricultural and stock-
breeding economy, which was typical for the Saltovo culture and which com-
bined parts of a sedentary and a nomadic lifestyle, could be found already in
Great Bulgaria. There is also a possibility that during the seventh century, a
sedentary Bulgar population lived on the Taman Peninsula.89
The review of the above-cited monuments and archaeological cultures from
the period between the fifth and the seventh centuries is instrumental for a
better understanding of the Saltovo culture’s emergence. The sedentarization
processes in the Khazar Khaganate were not merely the result of government
or foreign-political pressure. It can be assumed that they were carried out grad-
ually over a period of several centuries by peoples of different origins and eco-
nomic development. It is important to bear in mind that the population which
inhabited the steppes had a nomadic economy. In the fifth century, parts of it
withdrew to the areas bordering the steppe where they began to settle down.
This process led to the creation of the early Bulgar monuments, associated with
a sedentary lifestyle, in areas such as Dagestan and the Crimea, and on the ter-
ritory of the Penkovka culture.90 Thus, it can be said that there were sedentary
Alans and Bulgars already in the fifth century.91 At the same time, the nomads
2002, 128–129. In Stanilov’s view, the monuments of the Malaia Pereshchepina type
belonged to the Bulgar elite of the Dnieper area in the period up to the first half of the
eighth century (Stanilov 2003a, 64). Also noteworthy is the increasingly popular theory
that the center of Great Bulgaria was located in the vicinity of the Middle Dnieper (see
for example Naumenko 2004a, 69; Stanilov 2003a, 63). According to Petrukhin 2005, 73,
both the monuments of the Malaia Pereshchepina type in the Middle Dnieper area and
the Bititsa hillfort indicate that, from the mid-seventh century onward, this region gained
a vital significance for the “nomadic empires”, giving them power over the forest-steppe
zone of Eastern Europe.
88 Pletneva 1997, 43–44.
89 Pletneva 1999, 138. Sedentarization processes during the late seventh century, probably
related to a population of Bulgar origin, have also been noted for the Middle Volga Region
(Samarskaia Luka)—see Matveeva 2003; Matveeva and Kochkina 2005, 5–12).
90 Rashev 1998.
91 Stepanov 2003c, 38 and 2002b, 27–35. The mass sedentarization of the Scythians during
the Third Scythian kingdom (third century BC–third century AD) was also no sudden
or quick process. The beginnings of a sedentary lifestyle can already be seen during the
Second Scythian kingdon (fourth to third century BC). It is possible that the invasion of
the Sarmatians accelerated the sedentarization of the Scythians (during the third century
BC) (Khazanov 1975, 259).