ABSTRACT
How many people could list five classic period small villages near Tikal? Meanwhile, huge sites and monumental structures–the objects of tourist attraction and endless pseudo-scientific narratives–are well known to almost everyone. For different reasons, many archaeologists also choose to work on the ‘mega’; preferring examination of ‘increase’ and ‘formation’ over analysis of ‘decline’ and ‘collapse’. The corresponding trend in studies of the Trypillia giant-settlements was noted by Anthony, who recognized a set of contradictions among suggested suppositions for the formation and decline of these mega-sites (Anthony, 2013: 1235; also see the recent overview of the ongoing debates in Chapman et al., 2014). Hence, the purpose of this chapter is the revisal of imbalance in the ‘huge’–‘small’ and ‘formation’–‘collapse’ studies. The chapter targets three related issues regarding the large Trypillia settlements between the Southern Buh and the Dnipro. These are as follows.
