196 CHAPTER 4
1000 kilometers. A number of fortresses (hillforts) were built along the middle
and upper reaches of the Severski Donets. They were situated after the plunge
of the Donets Range and surrounded in a semicircle the approach routes to the
khaganate both from the southwest and the northwest. In the Kharkov area,
the line of fortresses curves to the northeast, before merging with the Don at
the Maiaki hillfort, 700 kilometers north of Sarkel. Therefore, it would hardly
be appropriate to define this vast and comparatively densely populated area,
stretching over 200 000 kilometers, as a border.
V. Mikheev regards the Don Region and the Severski Donets Valley as one
economic region.104 On the threshold between the eighth and the ninth cen-
turies, a complex economy emerged there. “Agriculture, handicrafts and com-
merce supplemented the extensive forms of pastoralism that the richest groups
of the population engaged in [.. .] A regular and sustained exchange between
the city and the village was carried out, the goods being specially produced for
the market”.105 The Don and the Severski Donets region contains two of the
studied Saltovo culture versions, which is the reason why this region is rarely
regarded as a whole. They have different ethnic features: the forest-steppe zone
was dominated by an Alanian population and the steppe one—by Bulgars. The
distinguishing features of these two versions are, however, not significant and
are probably the result of the geographic characteristics of the various regions.106
4.4 Settlements and Fortresses
The forest-steppe settlements and fortresses were closely related to the nearby
trade route. They also had an undeniable defensive significance as shelters
for the local population and the tradesmen in these lands. Some fortresses,
however, were too small to hold the population of the nearby settlements.
The line of five fortresses, situated on the right bank of the Severski Donets
in the steppe zone probably played a defensive role as well. Two of them,
104 Mikheev 1985, 51–52.
105 Mikheev 1985, 97–98.
106 In Tortika’s view, the population of Northwestern Khazaria was “in the same historical
and geographic context with the Khazar lands in the Eastern Cis-Azov Region and the
lower reaches of the Don”. This unity was also characterized by the presence of a natural
water way that connected, via the Don and the Severski Donets, the population of the
forest-steppe zone with the basins of the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea (Tortika 2006a,
230–231).