During June-July 2004, excavations of Trypillian culture sites took place in the village of Holyshiv, Lutsk district. Thirty years ago it was believed that there were practically no sites of this proto-civilization in Volyn. To date, Holyshiv is the only partially investigated site in the region, although Trypillian finds are also known in Lutsk (Hnidavska Hill, Luh) and near Volodymyr-Volynskyi (Zymne). The expedition this summer consisted of employees of the Volyn Museum of Local Lore (H. Okhrimenko, O. Zlatohorskyi), a representative of the Ostroh Historical and Cultural Reserve (Rivne region), researcher of the Lengyel culture O. Pozikhovskyi, and a student of the History Faculty of Lesya Ukrainka Volyn State University, I. Markus. Pupils of grades 6-8 of the Boratyn comprehensive school, under the guidance of teachers L. Pavlikha and L. Hnatiuk, took part in the excavations. The first investigations at the Holyshiv settlement were conducted under the leadership of Lviv archaeologist Mykola Peleshchyshyn in 1972 and 1973. The scholar believed that further excavations had no prospects. However, this year's finds - numerous ceramics, flint tools, dwelling daub, bones, spindle whorls - indicate the need to continue excavations for another 2-3 years. The excavations were conducted at the tract "Zamchysko," located 1 km southwest of the village of Holyshiv and approximately the same distance north of the neighboring village of Korshivets. It is a remnant of the left ancient bank of the small Chornohuzka River - a left tributary of the Styr River, surrounded on the east by the modern channel of the Chornohuzka and on the south and west by its wide marshy valley. Only from the northern side was it connected in ancient times by a narrow isthmus to the plateau. The remnant has an approximately triangular shape. The length of the site is 200 m, the greatest width (in the southern part) is 120 m, and the height above the floodplain is 6 m. The settlement at the described tract was discovered in 1960 during drainage works by agronomist M. Onufryk of the Volyn Regional Agricultural Research Station, who collected fragments of pottery and other finds on the freshly plowed surface. In the investigated area, the bulk of cultural remains consisted of materials of the Late Trypillian type. In addition to them, materials of the Late Paleolithic, Neolithic (Danube and Volyn cultures), Eneolithic (Lengyel culture and Globular Amphora culture), and Bronze Age (Eastern Trzciniec culture) were found. During this year's excavations, a burial of the Lengyel culture and remains of dwellings in the form of pits and collapsed ovens of the Late Trypillian culture were discovered. Next to them and inside them were ceramics, often decorated with cord impressions, stamp impressions, and painting; ceramic spindle whorls, animal figurines, stone grain grinders, flint axes, scrapers, burins, knives, clay daub from dwelling walls with impressions of beams and poles, as well as floors and grains of cereals.
Reference. The Trypillian culture is a unique phenomenon in the history of mankind. It played a significant role in the formation of world civilization. The chronological framework of Trypillia's existence is the 4th-3rd millennia BC (which synchronously coincides with the emergence of statehood in the territory of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates (Sumer). The name of the archaeological culture itself derives from the village of Trypillia near Kyiv, where at the end of the 19th century the Ukrainian archaeologist of Czech origin, Vikentiy Khvoika, made the first finds. Later, settlements of the Trypillian culture were found in the steppe and forest-steppe zones of modern Ukraine (the Cucuteni culture - in the territory of Moldova and Romania - is considered related to Trypillian). This was already a society with attributes of civilization. The basis of the Trypillian culture was agriculture. It was in Trypillia that the complete and final victory of the reproducing economy took place, which was a manifestation of the triumph of the Neolithic revolution. The introduction of agriculture throughout the entire Trypillian oikumene became the foundation of civilization. In addition to agriculture, the Trypillian culture is characterized by vivid examples of house-building, including two-story buildings, weaving, unique painted pottery with mythological and fairy-tale subjects, the beginnings of proto-writing, and the first giant proto-cities in the history of mankind. Under the influence of unfavorable ecological conditions at the end of the 3rd millennium, part of the Late Trypillian population moved from the steppe zone to the forest-steppe - reaching, in places, the border with Polissia. Volyn is the extreme limit of the spread of this culture. Overall, there are more questions than answers regarding the origin, existence, and decline of the Trypillian culture, its influence on the formation of world civilization and, in particular, on the formation of the Ukrainian ethnos. Disputes among scholars representing different points of view on these issues continue to this day.