THE PLACE OF THE TAGANROG SETTLEMENT WITHIN THE SYSTEM OF THE EARLY GREEK COLONIES IN THE REGION TO THE NORTH OF THE BLACK SEA (New and unpublished materials from the museums of the Rostov Region and private collections)

V.P.KOPYLOV (Rostov-on-Don )

Materials from the Greek settlement situated near the Stone Steps in the town of Taganrog were first brought to the attention of specialists after collections of such materials were made in 1935-1938.1 In the 1950s the collection of materials from the Taganrog settlement was supplemented by finds made by I.S. Kamenetsky, when there was a wind-induced ebb on the floor of the Taganrog Gulf.2 Most of the materials were made over to the safe-keeping of the Taganrog Museum, and part of them to the Rostov Regional History Museum. Materials collected by I.S. Kamenetsky in 1954 and 1957 are stored in the Rostov Museum. The whole range of materials from the Taganrog settlement consists so far of 26 pottery fragments. Work by the under-water archaeology expedition led by V.D. Blavatsky in 1960 confirmed that there were remains of a Greek colony on the sea-floor of 3 Taganrog Gulf in the vicinity of the Stone Steps.3 It was the material found in the store-rooms of the Taganrog and Rostov museums that were used by D.V. Shelov4 and I.B. Brashinsky5 in order to determine when the Taganrog settlement flourished, the nature of the settlement

1 T.N. Knipovich, Tanais, Moscow-Leningrad, 1949, p. 8. 2 I.S. Kamenetsky, Putevoditel po muzeu (Museum Guide), Issue No. 1,Taganrog, 1956, p. 9f. 3 V.D. Blavatsky, "Under-water Archaeological Investigations along the northern coast of the Black Sea in 1957-1962", Antichnaya arkheologiya (Classical Archaeology), Moscow, 1985, p. 169f. 4 D.B. Shelov, Tanais i Nizhnii Don v III-I vv do n.e. (Tanais and the Lower Reaches of the Don in the 3rd-lst centuries BC), Moscow, 1970, p. 45f. 5 I.B. Brashinsky, "Greeks and Barbarians in the lower reaches of the Don and to the North-East of the Sea of Azov in the 6th-4th centuries BC", Demograficheskaya situatsiya v Prichernomorie v periodie velikoi grecheskoi kolonizatsii (The Demographic Situation in the Black Sea region during the great Greek colonization), Tbilisi, 1981, p. 86f. 2

and its place within the system of Greek colonies in the region to the North of the Black Sea. In the 1970s and 1980s materials from the Taganrog settlement made their way not only into the collections of the Taganrog Museum,6 but also private ones, which were often inaccessible to researchers. Large-scale work was undertaken to collect materials from the Taganrog set- tlement and prepare them for use in museums in the late eighties and nineties by the staff of the Archaeology Department of the Taganrog Archaeological Park under the supervision of P.A. Lavrenok. During that short period over 5,000 pot- tery fragments were collected of which 1,035 items were classified as part of the museum's main collection. At the beginning of the nineties the most signifi- - cant pieces both in the Taganrog Museum's new collections and also various - private collections were made available to scholars for research purposes.7 A complete catalogue of finds made between 1988 and 1994 and currently held in the Taganrog Museum, with the addition of materials from the Taganrog settlement found by I.S. Kamenetsky in the 1950s, was published in 1994.g Since the catalogue was published, regular collections of materials on the shore of the Taganrog Gulf to the East of the modem port have been made by the staff of the Archaeological Department of the Taganrog Museum under the

6 A.L. Gleizer, "New Finds from the Classical Period near the Stone Steps in Taganrog" (Abstract for a paper), Problemy okhrany i issledovaniya pamyatnikov arkheologii v Donbasse (Questions regarding the Protection and Investigation of Archaeological Monuments in the Donbass) - Conference - Donetsk, 1989, p. 157. 7 V. Kopylov, "Taganrog et la premiere colonisation grecque du littoral nord-est de la mer d'Azov", Sur les traces des argonautes: Actes du 6e Symposiumde Vani (Colchide), September 22- 29, 1990, Paris, 1996, pp. 328-334; "The First Greek Colony in the Azov Region", Istoriko-arkheo- logicheskie issledovaniya v Azove i na Nizhnem Donu (Historical and Archaeological Research in Azov and the Lower Reaches of the Don), Issue 10, Azov, 1991, pp. 42-47; "Archaic Painted Pottery from the collections of the Taganrog Museum" (Abstract for a paper), Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya v basseine Chernogo morya v drevnosti i srednie veka (International Relations in the Black Sea basin in the Ancient World and the Middle Ages) - Conference - Rostov-on-Don, 1992, p. 16f; "On the Question of the Metropolis of the Greek Apoikia in the Taganrog Area", Antichnye polisy i mestnoye naselenie Prichernomoriya (Classical Poleis and the Local Population in the Black Sea region) - Materials for an international conference entitled: "Mezhpolisnye vzaimootnosheniya v Prichernomorye v dorimskuyu epokhu. Ekonomika, politika, kultura (Relations between Poleis in the Black Sea region in the pre-Roman period: Economics, Politics, Culture) - Sebastopol, 1995, pp. 111-115. g V.P Kopylov, P.A. Larenok, Taganrogskoye Poselenie. Katalog sluchainykh nakhodok u Ka- mennoi lestnitsy, g. Taganrog: Sbory 1988-1994 gg. (The Taganrog Settlement. Catalogue of Chance Finds by the Stone Steps in Taganrog: Finds collected in 1988-1994), Rostov-on-Don, 1994.