BEREZAN
Ukraine.
The first Greek colony
in the N Black Sea, it is on an island in the Dnieper-S.
Bug estuary. The earliest Greek pottery dates from ca.
mid 7th c. B.C.
The city's most prosperous period dates from the 6th-5th c. B.C. and is represented by traces of houses, 6th c.
pottery, and black-glazed bowls of the 6th-5th c. from
Rhodes and Attica; also terracottas (seated goddesses or
grotesques), and 5th c. coins from Olbia. There is also
a necropolis. Recent excavations suggest that the site
existed until the 4th c. B.C. and was inhabited again in
the early centuries A.D. when various finds indicate that
a sanctuary of Achilles may have existed here. The
Hermitage and Odessa Museums contain material from
this site.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E. H. Minns,
Scythians and Greeks
(1913) 451-53; E. Belin de Ballu,
L'Histoire des Colonies
grecques du Littoral nord de la Mer Noire (1965) 41-43; V. V. Lapin,
Grecheskaia kolonizatsiia Severnogo
Prichernomor'ia (1966); I. B. Brašinskij, “Recherches
soviétiques sur les monuments antiques des régions de la
Mer Noire,”
Eirene 7 (1968) 86-87; K. S. Gorbunova,
Drevnie Greki na ostrove Berezan' (1969).
M. L. BERNHARD & Z. SZTETYŁŁO
