The Cucuteni C pottery in the Cucuteni-Trypillia cultural complex (Formulation of the problem and a brief historiography)

The “Cucuteni C pottery” is a special term for a kind of Cucuteni pottery, injected by Hubert Schmidt. The earliest samples of this pottery are dated by the B1 stage. According to T. Movsha, this kind of pottery appeared at Cucuteni-Trypillia sites under the infl uence of Serednii Stig Culture. Another question is whether these contacts were important for developing of this kind of pottery, especially for the Trypillia B1 - Cucuteni A stages. Samples of Serednyi Stig Culture from Cucuteni-Trypillia sites are innumerous. These sites are distributed on large area, but mainly in the western rather than eastern part, close to the Serednii Stig Culture area. For Trypillia B1-B2 - Cucuteni A-B stages the most of fi nds come from sites of the Soloncheny local group. At the Soloncheny and Myropillia sites this pottery is most similar to Steppe samples in terms of technology, stylistics and, partly, forms of pots. Some of samples may have been really imported of produced by the bearers of Serednii Stig Culture. But the appearing of Cucucteni C pottery at this time did not change the original Trypillia-Cucuteni traditions and the Serednii Stig Culture infl uence was limited. The use of cord decorations from BII stage may have been connected with the infl uence of Chernavoda I Culture. On the other hand, the Cucuteni C pottery was the main common feature of pottery assemblages at whole area inhabited by the Cucuteni-Trypillia people. The most realistic point of view is that the spreading of Cucuteni C pottery reflected more tribal than intercultural relations.