Location information

Iuzhno-Donuzlav

POPOVKA (Village) UKRAINE
  This coastal settlement, 28 km NW of Eupatoria near the village of Popovka, was founded in the late 4th c. B.C. by Chersonesus. It was seized by the Scythians in the mid 2d c. B.C. and ceased to exist in the late 1st c. A.D.
  Thus far no remains of fortifications from the Greek period have been uncovered. In the central part of the site is a round Scythian fortress-citadel built in the 2d c. B.C. and consisting of a thick embankment and deep ditch with an external facing of up to 18 rows of rough stone. A stone wall, now destroyed, stood atop the rampart. These fortifications enclosed an area of ca. 130 by 45 m, which was smaller than the original Greek settlement. By the 1st c. A.D., the settlement had spread outside the defensive system and had even extended beyond the boundary of the earlier Greek area. The chief monumental remains excavated are numerous dwellings and horrea; these are rectangular and built of stone. A number of stone walls and palisades connected and delineated the various buildings and helped to enclose several flagstone courtyards. The remains of a Scythian iurta (nomadic tent) from the 1st c. A.D. were found at one spot outside the fortress. Two crude stelai uncovered in the NW part of the site, outside the walls, suggest the presence of a Scythian cemetery during the last period of the settlement's history.

T. S. Noonan, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites, Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Nov 2002 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.

• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Per...