Settlements of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture

[3][4][5] In terms of overall size, some of Cucuteni-Trypillia sites, such as Talianki (with a population of 15,000 and covering an area of some 340 hectares – 840 acres) in the Uman Raion of Ukraine, are as large as (or perhaps larger than) the more famous city-states of Sumer in the Fertile Crescent.

Academicians have not designated the gigantic settlements of Cucuteni-Trypillia culture as "cities" due to the lack of conclusive evidence for internal social differentiation or specialization.

[7] The Cucuteni-Trypillia settlements were usually located on a place where the geomorphology provided natural barriers to protect the site, most notably using high river terraces or canyon edges.

Each house, including its ceramic vases, ovens, figurines and innumerable objects made of perishable materials, shared the same circle of life, and all of the buildings in the settlement were physically linked together as a larger symbolic entity.

Each household was almost completely self-supportive within these communities as if instead of being located within a settlement, each family was living away from town and neighbors in the country.

A lack of public infrastructure within these settlements compelled the inhabitants to include all aspects of their lives within their domicile; ovens, kilns, working, and sleeping areas were all within the same space as the family's sacred altars.

The buildings included both the sacred and profane, which some authorities see as evidence to support the idea that the inhabitants viewed their homes as living beings.

[12] Some of these large settlements include: A 2009 British-Ukrainian archaeological expedition, organized by John Chapman and Mykhailo Videiko, focussed on the 300 ha mega-site of Nebelivka, Kirovograd domain, enabling the production of a 15 ha geophysics plot with over 50 burnt structures and a small number of unburnt structures, as well as pits and other anomalies.

[21] Due to a dramatic worldwide climate change around 3200 BCE, the area of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture would have been plunged into a devastating Dust Bowl drought.

[24] Recent results from researchers of the Kiel University (Collaborative Research Centre 1266), based on the geophysical survey and excavation of a number of the "megasites" ,suggests that these declined in part due to a process of social fissioning as emerging hierarchical decision-making models were rejected by communities politically organized into autonomous segmented lineages.