John Chapman, a researcher at the Nebelivka site, believes that the Trypillia sites could not be called a “city” in terms of size and population density. Rather, he speaks of “proto-urban” sites, sites “in the early stages of urban development, with some characteristics of a city, but which have not yet fully become cities.”
Johannes Muëller, for his part, changed his mind on the question: “it’s a city, or at least it’s urban”. To defend his hypothesis, he puts forward the idea that the notion of city in prehistory varies depending on the place. “European cities were, for example, different from Chinese cities.”
He explains that to qualify a place as a city, “we first need a concept, visible planning from the start of construction”. For Trypillia, there are signs. We observe that the houses were positioned in the shape of a circle all around an empty space. As the population increased, the empty space in the center decreased with the construction of new circles inside.
His second argument is based on the fact that, on a site of such size, the inhabitants could not all know each other like those of a village. According to him, “there were around 5,000 to 15,000 people living in the Trypillia sites”. Finally, signs of an economy were found. “We know they carried heavy loads long distances. There was a fairly advanced form of a metallurgical practice, and we think there was a political system.”
Mykhailo Videiko, Ukrainian archaeologist and one of the co-directors of operations at the Maidanetske site, shares the same opinion as Johannes Muëller. He compares the size of the Maidanetske site to that of “a large medieval city like Kyiv (200-300 hectares) or Chernihiv (200 hectares)”. He adds that “with a population of around 15,000 inhabitants, engaged in various economic, administrative and political activities, Maidanetske was indeed what we call a town”.
After numerous debates, archaeologists ended up more or less adopting the term mega-sites, between the village and the city.
For Johannes Muëller, “the political system of Trypillia was unique, if we compare it to other prehistoric sites”. In Mesopotamia, the political system of Uruk was hierarchical. In Trypillia, on the other hand, “we detect no trace of social and hierarchical stratification” during the period of the mega-sites.
For the archaeologist, the political system of the mega-sites functioned on a community, or assembly, model. “The direct neighbors formed a small-sized community, then the more distant neighborhood formed a medium-sized community. And finally, the large neighborhood formed a large community for the entire city,” he comments.
In contrast, for Mykhailo Videiko, the political system of these mega-sites would have been made up of “chiefdoms”, an organizational system including a few tribes. He adds “perhaps the mega-sites were the centers of these chiefdoms”.
Several archaeological evidence tends to prove that Trypillia was one of the first places where agriculture was practiced in Europe. What surprised Johannes Muëller was that this agriculture was much more important than researchers had long imagined. According to new analyses, “90 to 95% of their nutrition would have been composed of vegetables”. Would this society have had flexi-vegetarian tendencies? For him, “in principle, they were vegetarians, but on the other hand, they certainly also consumed dairy products and meat”, to a lesser extent.
