Noua

Noua 

an archaeological culture of the late Bronze Age (the last quarter of the second millennium B.C.), widespread in what is now central and eastern Rumania, the Moldavian SSR, and the western Ukrainian SSR. It was named after a burial ground at the village of Noua, near the city of Braşov in Rumania. The Noua culture was characterized by unfortified settlements of rectangular houses built directly on the ground with vertically placed posts; ash pits; and numerous household storage pits. The flat-grave burial grounds contained up to 200 graves, with corpses in a flexed position and, more rarely, cremated remains.

Two types of pottery predominated—a primitive type characterized by vessels of a baglike shape and a more refined type, glazed black or gray and characteristically having one or two handles. Other finds were bronze leaf-shaped spearheads, celts, pins, and bone arrowheads and cheekpieces. Tribes of the Noua culture, living in the primitive clan system, engaged mainly in cattle breeding and, to a lesser extent, in land cultivation.

REFERENCES

Meliukova, A. I. “Pamiatniki skifskogo vremeni lesostepnogo Srednego Podnestrov’ia.” In the collection Materialy i issledovaniia po arkheologii SSSR, no. 64. Moscow, 1958.
Balaguri, E. A. “Mohyl’nyk kul’tury Noa na Stanislavshchyni.” Arkheolohiia, 1961, vol. 13.
Petrescu-Dîmboviţa, M. “Konets bronzovogo i nachalo rannezheleznogo veka v Moldove v svete poslednikh arkheologicheskikh raskopok.” Dacia, new series, 1960, no. 4.
Florescu, A. C. “Contribuţii la cunoaşţerea culturii Noua.” In Arheologia Moldovei, vols. 2–3. Iaşi, 1964.

V. S. TITOV