Средневековые городища на Южном Буге. Освоение пространства и предназначение укреплений
Medieval hill-forts in Southern Bug region. The exploration of landscape and the purpose of the fortifications

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with the hill-forts of the medieval tribe of "Ulichi" who came to a region of Southern Bug River in the late 10th century AD and left here about 50 remains of hill-forts. Among the special characters of ulichi hill-forts are the construction of shafts with stone covering, the placement of wells inside the fortifications, and the protection of water sources by additional fortifications. One of the interesting traditions of hillforts location is paired settlements located across the ravine or on the neighboring capes not further than 500 m from each other (such as hill-forts Tarasivka or Sosny). Considering the basic version that ulichi people in the territory of Southern Bug basin are not an autochthonous population, we are inevitably faced with the question of how exactly they used the space in which they decided to settle? The Ulichi people become identifiable at the end of the 10th century, in a region that until then had belonged to the distribution area of the Raikovetska archaeological culture of the 8th-10th centuries. We created a map of the ulichi hill-forts known for today, which is counts 50 objects, located on an area of 14 300 km2. and provided a viewshed analysis of 3 km and 5km visibility zone for 50 hill-forts. Thus, we can say that these hill-forts were not built for the purpose of domination and for control of the territory, or with the aim of the defensive line construction.

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