Locations of Ancient Fords on the Sula River

Abstract

It is known that from ancient times rivers were not only a source of water and certain types of food, but also significant obstacles for overland travel. This especially applies toto the second-order watercourses, the length of which reached hundreds of kilometers, making it simply impossible to bypass them, including the right tributary of the Dnipro River — the Sula. Therefore, usually the most convenient places were chosen to overcome the water obstacle, which had optimal conditions, namely the width and depth of the channel, the speed of the current, the convenience of the coastline, etc. Usually there were not many of them and they functioned for a considerable period of time. In the article the issue of finding important elements of land communication of the Left-bank forest-steppe, namely crossings and fords across the Sula River, which could have existed in the Early Iron Age, was considered. Using the analysis of later cartographic materials, the locations of such important infrastructure elements of the 19th century as ferry crossings, which were usually located in the most favourable sections of the coastline and existed for quite a long time, were identified. Also, the names of settlements were taken into account, in which the answer could be found in the search for fords through the Sula. The analysis of later historical events that took place in the region helped a lot in solving the issue of finding fords and crossings, because, as mentioned above, there were few convenient places and they were usually used for thousands of years. In the paper four places on the Sula River that could have been used by the ancient population as fords and crossings, namely: Pishchanyi ford on the upper reaches of Sula and Basivka, Hlynsk and “Horoshynskyi portage” in the Sula basin. The locations on the right bank of both fortified settlements and large burial mounds of the Early Iron Age demonstrate a certain regularity that suggests the presence of crossing-points. We argue that the approach to these crossing-points was also marked on the left bank with mounds of 3—4 m height. So, the Sula River example shows the perspective of the direction of research of ancient communication routes, namely the search for places of ancient crossings and fords with the help of local historical literature, cartographic materials and analysis of later historical events that took place in the region.