Abstract

There have long been several debatable problems related to the Kizil-Koba culture and the Tauri in archeology. One of the most difficult is the Tauri’s settlement. After identification of the Kizil-Koba culture with the Tauri, the territory of their settlement is supposed to be identical with the area of the sites of this culture. However, since Herodotus describes in detail the “country” of the Tauri as a mountainous area, it contradicts to the archaeological fact that the monuments of the Kizil-Koba culture exist both in the steppe part of the Crimea and on the Kerch Peninsula, which Herodotus does not include in the regions of the Tauri. According to Strabo, the Tauri once occupied the entire Crimean peninsula. One of the scholars surmised that the habitat of the Tauri changed over time, and by the fifth century BCE their tribes completely moved to the foothill and mountainous areas. Heated debates unfolded regarding the boundaries of Tauria. According to Herodotus, its western border lies near the town of Kerkinitis. This issue was resolved after Kerkinitis’s ruins were discovered in Yevpatoria and this site was considered the town mentioned by Herodotus. The eastern border is supposed to stretch to Feodosia. The discovery of the monuments with Taurian ceramics and pre-Greek settlements in Bosporus’s territory points to the presence of the Tauri, although Herodotus does not include the Kerch Peninsula in the “country” of the Tauri. Since they were the autochthonous people of the Crimea, there must have been an archaeological culture that preceded the Kizil-Kobin one. The discovery of this culture, the Belozerskaya culture, expanded our understanding of the Tauri’s habitat. Thus, the archaeological finds of the steppe, mountainous and foothill Crimea change the idea of the area of the Tauri’s settlement and clarify the information provided by the ancient authors.