Costoboci - Material Culture

Material Culture

Some scholars associate the Costoboci with the Lipiţa culture. However Roger Batty, reluctant to correlate material culture with group identity, argues that Lipiţa culture belonged either to a subgroup of the Costoboci or to some population they ruled over. This culture developed on the northern side of the Carpathians in the Upper Dniester and Prut basins in the Late La Tène period.

The bearers of this culture had a sedentary lifestyle and practiced agriculture, cattle-breeding, iron-working and pottery. The settlements were not fortified and contained sunken floored buildings, surface buildings, storage pits, hearths, ovens and kilns. There are numerous pottery finds of various types, both wheel and hand-made, with similarities in shape and decoration to the pottery of the pre-Roman Dacia. The pottery finds of the northern Lipiţa sites in the upper Zolota Lypa basin are similar to that of the Zarubintsy culture.The cemeteries were found close to settlements. The predominant funeral rite was cremation, with urns containing ashes buried in plain graves, but several inhumation graves were also excavated.