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The Basarabi culture was an archaeological culture in Southeastern Europe (mainly in Romania), dated between 8th - 7th centuries BC. It was named after Basarabi, a village in Dolj County, south-western Romania, nowadays an administrative component of the Calafat municipality. It is sometimes grouped with related Bosut culture, into the Bosut-Basarabi complex.
The Basarabi culture is related to the Hallstatt culture of the Iron Age period that, when normalised, is uniformly spread apart from a reduced number of sites in Muntenia, the central Moldavian Carpathians and Oltenia.
The Hallstatt A (12-11th BC) and B (10-8th BC) correspond to the late Bronze Age Urnfield culture, Hallstatt C (7th BC) to the early Iron Age, and Hallstatt D (6th BC) to the Iron Age. The Hallstatt culture probably consisted of many different peoples and language groups. The variant known as the Basarabi culture was present over much of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia (Vojvodina), and central Moldavia up to the Dniester River (Nistru in Romanian) around 650 BC.
During this period, the Greeks founded cities along the Black Sea coast, and the first written records describe their encounters with the indigenous people.
- ^ Dima, Christian; Borangic, Catalin (2018). "Wagon-Models from the Second Iron Age. Journey to the Outer World or Gifts for the Gods?". Archaeologica Bulgarica. 22 (2): 15–32.
Metal model wagons are a much wider appearance for the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. The Bronze Age wagon models belonging to the Urnfield culture are known as vessel-carrying wagon models (Kesselwagen) provided as grave goods, in the vessel being carried the cremated remains of the deceased. Some of these wagons also have water-bird protomes and were found in Acholshausen (Germany), Peckatel (Germany), Skallerup (Denmark), Milaveč (Czech Republic). This evolved later in Villanovan and Hallstatt cultures of the Early Iron Age in different parts of Europe, majority in Italy, also related with a funerary practice. This kind of wagon were also found in Carpathian Basin, some of them being decorated with water birds protomes, for example, the Kesselwagen from Bujoru (Teleorman County, Romania) belonging to Basarabi culture.
- ^ "The votive chariot from Bujoru". capodopere2019.ro. 2019.
- ^ "Wagon model, Bujoru, Romania, 800-700 BCE". Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. 21 September 2022.