| Kobyakovo Settlement | |
| Coordinates: | 47.2464°N 39.8511°W |
| Type: | settlement |
| Excavations: | since 1824 |
The Kobyakovo Settlement (Russian: Кобяково городище) is an archaeological site situated in Rostov Oblast, Russia between the cities of Rostov-on-Don and Aksai.
Some direct or indirect connections between Kobyakovo Settlement and Tanais had existed since the time of Ancient Rome and the Bosporan Kingdom (which was from 63 BC a dependency of Rome). Historical literature suggests that the Kuban Maeotians tribes migrated to the Lower Don land on the orders of the king of Bosporus. Their resettlement was gradual. First, in the surroundings of Tanais there appeared Podazovskoye and Krepostnoe settlements. A little later – the Nizhne-Gnilovskoye Settlement, and only after it – the Kobyakovo Settlement.
Archaeologist Sergey Makhankov presumes the existence close relations between Tanais and the mechatian fortifications of Roman times (among them Kobyakovo fortified settlement), secondly, gives their inhabitants a common name "tanaites", thirdly, calls them residents of "ancient Rostov", fourthly, suggests 23 AD (the earliest and the date fixed by a reliable epigraphic monument, when the "Tanaits" are mentioned) the starting point of the two thousand-year history of Rostov-on-Don. Such a historical concept, although controversial, received attention from other historians.
It is believed that Kobyakovo ancient settlement was the residence of the Polovtsian khans and named after the Polovtsian Khan Kobyak.
For the first time the phrase "Kobyakovo hillfort" is found in a letter of 7 July 1570, written by Ambassador Ivan Novoseltsev to Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Presumably, near the former Kobyakov settlement in the first half of the 16th century and even the entire 17th century there was a Cossack camp situated close to the border of Ottoman lands.
As a historical and geographical site, Kobyakovo ancient settlement has no unambiguous borders.
Kobyakovo hillfort includes a hill on the banks of the Don River. The fortified settlement became the site of the first archaeological expedition in the South of Russia in 1824. The first settlements existed here in the 10th–8th centuries BC. Notable archaeological finds date from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD. At the present time Kobyakovo hillfort contains visible remains of structures and traces of excavations.