Mikhailovka Settlement

a settlement of the Aeneolithic period and the early Bronze Age near the village of Mikhailovka, Novovorontsovka Raion, Kherson Oblast, Ukrainian SSR. It was excavated from 1952 to 1955 and from 1960 to 1963. The cultural layer, measuring up to 2.4 m thick, consists of three horizons.

The most ancient horizon (the second quarter and middle of the third millennium B.C.) yielded the remains of a small farming and stock-raising settlement with semisubterranean dwellings, flint and bone tools, and black polished flat-bottomed pottery. The upper horizons date from the middle of the third millennium B.C. and the beginning of the second millennium B.C. They revealed the remains of a large settlement (area, more than 1 hectare) with pisé dwellings built on the ground and partly into the ground. During the last phase of its existence, the settlement was surrounded by stone walls and by ditches. Vessels with flat and pointed bottoms, stone and bone tools, and copper and bronze artifacts of local and foreign workmanship were found. The population engaged in stock raising and cultivation and maintained relations with the north Caucasian tribes.