Kizil-Koba Culture

an archaeological culture that existed in the mountain and foothill regions of the Crimea in the ninth to sixth centuries B.C. It is represented by settlements and burial grounds. The culture is named after the Kizil-Koba cave located 25 km south of Simferopol’. The cave was inhabited in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.

The Kizil-Koba culture has been linked with the Tauri tribes, which at that time lived in small clans and engaged in transhumant stock raising and, along river valleys, in farming using the hoe. The pottery comprised pots, basins, and goblets, which were often polished and decorated with attached or incised ornamentation. A shortage of metal was responsible for the broad use of stone and bone articles (only ornaments were made of bronze). The similarity of the material cultures of the tribes of the Kizil-Koba culture and the Koban culture of the northern Caucasus has led to the supposition that the two were genetically linked and that the Kizil-Koba culture originated in the Caucasus.