BELIAUS
Crimea.
A fortified agricultural settlement of ca. 3500 sq. m, located 41 km NW of Eupatoria near the mouth of Lake Donuzlav, founded from
Chersonesus in the late 4th c. B.C. Beliaus was apparently
seized by the Scythians in the mid 2d c. B.C. and inhabited
by them until the 1st c. A.D. Excavations have uncovered
the remains of two stone defensive walls of the 4th-3d
c. along with a corner tower composed of several rooms
on the ground floor and a stairway that presumably led
to a second story. Around the 2d c. B.C. a layer of rough
stones was built along the outside tower walls to provide
added protection against battering rams. Inside the
fortifications were numerous structures of the 4th c. B.C.-1st c. A.D., the most interesting of which was a large
building of at least eight rooms. North of the site was
a cemetery composed primarily of crypt, pit, cenotaph,
catacomb, and earthen Scythian graves of the 1st c. B.C.-1st c. A.D. One crypt was later used for a Hunnic burial
of the late 4th or early 5th c.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
O. D. Dashevskaia & A. N. Shcheglov,
“Khersonesskoe ukreplenie na gorodishche Beliaus,”
SovArkh (1965) 2.246-55; Dashevskaia, “Antichnaia
bashnia na gorodishche Beliaus,”
KSIA 116 (1969) 85-92; id., “Dva sklepa Beliausskogo mogil'nika,”
KSIA 119
(1969) 65-73; id. et al., “Ekspeditsiia Evpatoriiskogo
muzeia,”
Arkeologicheskie Okrytia 1971 goda 352-53;
id., “Raskopki gorodishcha i mogil'nika Beliaus,”
Arkheologicheskie Okrytiia 1972 goda 277-78.
T. S. NOONAN