MIKHAILOVKA
Bosporus.
A Hellenized
agricultural settlement 20 km W of Kerch by the modern village. The site, located in a hilly area along the dried-up bed of a river that once flowed into Lake Churbash, consists of a citadel, the surrounding agricultural region, and a necropolis. The settlement probably arose in the 4th-3d c., the period in which most of the crypt and stone box kurgan graves in the necropolis were
erected. Aerial photos and ground studies indicate, however, that the entire area was divided into farmsteads of 10.2 ha rectangles even before the kurgans were made.
Excavations have shown that the main settlement atop
the central hill had four strata extending from the 2d
c. B.C. to 3d c. A.D. A powerful stone defensive wall,
quadrangular in plan, was constructed in the second half
of the 1st c. A.D. about the time when most of the settlement was destroyed by fire. A second similar defensive wall surrounded the settlement in the 2d-3d c. The citadel of the 1st-3d c. probably formed part of the defensive
system of the Bosporan state. The remains of numerous
dwellings and other structures were uncovered inside the
citadel.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
B. G. Peters, “Raskopki gorodishcha
u s. Mikhailovka v 1963 g.,”
KSIA 103 (1965) 119-24;
id., “Raskopki antichnogo poseleniia v vostochnom
Krymu,”
Arkheologicheskie Otkrytiia 1971 g. 348-49;
G. M. Efimova et al., “Okhrannye raboty na kurgannom
mogil'nike u s. Mikhailovka,”
KSIA 130 (1972) 97-104.
T. S. NOONAN
