Northern influences in pottery at Vergina. Above left: Kantharos with rising handles and bossed decoration, 10th century. Above right: Bowl with rising button-knobbed handles, 11th-early 10th century. Similar handles were found at Olynthos. Below left: Bowl with channelled decoration and rising peak-knobbed handles, early 10th century. Below right: High-handled jug or cup, early 10th century. A shape popular throughout Thracian lands in the first half of the first millennium.

Metalwork from the Early Iron Age cemetery at Vergina. 1. Bronze shield-boss, early 10th century. Diam. 4.7 cm. 2. Bronze arc fibula, 11th-early 10th century. L. approx. 4 cm.

Iron makhaira, early 10th century. L. 24 cm.

Iron flange-hilted sword, 11th-early 10th century. L. 69 cm

Rock tomb in a low-massive outcrop near Ovchevo with a bier in an arched recess opposite the entrance.

Sharapani or troughs for pressing grapes, carved in living rock on hilltops in the east Rhodopes may have had a ritual purpose.

Gluhite Kameni, a peak in the low, densely forested east Rhodopes, with a rock-cut tomb; steps lead to the summit.

A huge outcrop at Ardino is pitted with niches, most, like those at Gluhite Kameni and elsewhere, trapezoidal in shape, usually between 50 and 100 cm high. From the top, which is flush with the cliff faces, the niches gradually widen and deepen to bases 25-50 cm wide and 25-30 cm deep.

Sherds from the Mezek fortress area. These have close analogies with finds from the Lake Mandren fortress.

Basarabi artefacts.
1 Jug from Ferigile. Ht 24 cm.
2 Fragment of bowl from Ferigile. W. 30 cm.
3 Two-handled bowl from Frogg.
4 Jar from Frogg.
5 Curved dagger from Frogg.
6 Curved sword from Balta Verde. L. 51 cm.

Thracian artefacts from Sholdaneshty. Left: Sherd with running spiral decoration. Centre: Piriform vessel. Ht 37 cm. Right: Bronze arc fibula, perhaps an import from South Thrace. The Carpatho-Balkan running spiral, rising button-knobbed and peaked handles, bossed 'Villanovan-type' urns and cups like those from Troy VII b, but with horizontal rims and rising handles, are all present at settlements such as Sholdaneshty in the Middle Dniester forest-steppe. New forms include piriform vessels with small bosses and a high neck carrying horizontal channelling and knobbed high-handled dippers, often with incised white-encrusted decoration.

Pottery from the Middle Dnieper, Kanev district.

Bowl with rising peak-knobbed handles.

High knobbed-handled cup.

Vessel with faintly bossed decoration.

7th-century decoration on north-west Pontic potsherds. 1 Berezan; 2 Orlovka

Above right: Late Bronze - Early Iron Age zoomorphic clay vessel, from Ostrovul Mare. Ht to rim 14.5 cm.

Below right; Late Bronze - Early Iron Age zoomorphic clay vessel, from Chotin. Ht 15.5 cm