| Cernavodă culture | |
| Region: | Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia |
| Period: | Chalcolithic |
| Dates: | – 3200 BC |
| Precededby: | Sredny Stog culture, Suvorovo culture, Karanovo culture, Gumelnița culture, Varna culture |
| Followedby: | Coțofeni culture, Baden culture, Usatove culture, Yamnaya culture, Ezero culture |
The Cernavodă culture, ca. 4000–3200, is a late Copper Age archaeological culture distributed along the lower Eastern Bug River and Danube and along the coast of the Black Sea and somewhat inland, generally in present-day Bulgaria and Romania. It is named after the Romanian town of Cernavodă (Bulgarian černa vodá (чёрна водá in cyrillic) means 'black water').
It is a successor to and occupies much the same area as the earlier Karanovo culture and Gumelnița culture, for which a destruction horizon seems to be evident. It is part of the "Balkan-Danubian complex" that stretches up the entire length of the river and into northern Germany via the Elbe and the Baden culture; its northeastern portion is thought to be ancestral to the Usatove culture.
It is characterized by defensive hilltop settlements. The pottery shares traits with that found further east, in the Sredny Stog culture on the south-west Eurasian steppe; burials similarly bear a resemblance to those further east.
It has been theorized that Cernavoda culture, together with the Sredny Stog (russian Средний Стог - middle (hay)stack) culture, was the source of Anatolian languages and introduced them to Anatolia through the Balkans after Anatolian split from the Proto-Indo-European language, which some linguists and archaeologists place in the area of the Sredny Stog culture.[1] [2] [3]