THE FORTIFIED SETTLEMENT OF THE HUN PERIOD NEAR THE VERKHNEYE KAZACHYE VILLAGE AT THE DON OSTRAYA LUKA BEND
The bend of the Upper Don near the town of Zadonsk in the Lipetsk region is rich with settlements dating to the second fourth of I millennium AD. This paper refers a settlement near the Verkhneye Kazachye village where 1299 m<sup>2</sup> have been recently excavated to this group. It analyzes stratigraphic data and radiocarbon dating results, examines fortification constructions and household dwellings and characterizes ceramic and artifact assemblages. The settlement site is bound from various sides by two fortification lines built during the Scythian and Sarmatian period. Judging by the ceramics in the fills, both lines had three ditches were made during the Hun period. Three aboveground dwellings (their location was identified on the basis of hearths), 34 postholes and refuse pits were identified in the excavation trenches. More than 10,000 fragments of kitchen and table clay pots (both hand-made, with smoothed and burnished surface and wheel-made, though in smaller quantities) were found. Tools and implements are represented by more than 120 finds made from metal, clay, stone and bone. Analogies to the retrieved materials date the site to the late 4<sup>th</sup> -5<sup>th</sup> centuries AD. The excavation of this settlement has enlarged the list of fortified sites discovered earlier in the forest-steppe belt of the Don region to four.