Intermarine Area Archaeology and its Contribution to Studies of Prehistoric Europe

5.1.1 Subcarpathian Programme

The research programme pursued jointly by the centres of Cracow and Rzeszów in Poland and Lviv in Ukraine may be called Subcarpathian. Its sources may be traced to the research preferences prevailing in the Second Republic (see stage two above). After the Second World War, a major milestone on the way to their revival was the foundation of the international journal Acta Archaeologica Carpathica in 1960 edited by Andrzej Żaki. Its purpose was to encourage joint research by scholars from the Carpathian countries, reviews of work and achievements of all specialists engaged in the study of the history of the Carpathians, and efforts to get rid of separatism in research (Żaki, 1960).

The final decade of the twentieth century witnessed important endeavours by the Cracow archaeologists. Among them, a cross-border programme of field investigations in the Carpathians ranked high. Started already in the early 1990s by Jan Machnik, it was carried out by two major centres: the Cracow Branch of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, and the I. Krypyakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, Lviv, with the participation of researchers from other institutions (Cyhylyk & Machnik, 1994). Its focus was the many-sided exploration of a selected section of the Polish-Ukrainian frontier in the Subcarpathian area. The pioneering and multidisciplinary work, combining the methods of traditional archaeology and diverse natural-science analyses, examined the relationships between man and the environment from the Neolithic to the early Middle Ages (Harmata, Machnik, & Starkel, 2006; Harmata, Machnik, & Rybicka, 2013). In addition, about 3,000 barrows were documented in the forest-steppe and steppe zones of Western Ukraine (Machnik, Pavliv, & Petehyryč, 2006a,b,c; Machnik, Pawliw, & Petehyrycz, 2011), with some having been excavated (Czopek, Machnik, Pasterkiewicz, Pawliw, & Petehyrycz, 2015; Machnik et al., 2011).

The principal goals set by Jan Machnik were pursued and expanded first by the Department and soon the Institute of Archaeology founded at Rzeszów University in 1998. Rzeszów (initially Cracow-Rzeszów) research projects encompassed – next to neighbouring lands on the Dniester – Volhynia and Moldavia. These efforts, especially the study of the Neolithic and Eneolithic, were carried out for the most part by Małgorzata Rybicka and her international, Polish-Ukrainian-Moldovan research team (Diaczenko, Król, Kyrylenko, Rybicka, & Werteletski, 2016; Diachenko, Rybicka, Król, & Sîrbu, 2019; Rybicka, Hawinskyj, & Pasterkiewicz, 2019; cf. Rybicka, 2017). The main partners in these endeavours were the I. Krypyakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, Lviv, and the Institute of Archaeology, National Academy of Sciences of Moldova, Kishinev.

In turn, an earlier period, namely that of the first agrarian communities, is studied by international teams (Polish-German and Polish-German-Moldovan) headed by Maciej Dębiec, Thomas Saile, and the prematurely departed Stanislav Ţerna (Dębiec & Saile, 2015; Saile, Dębiec, Posselt, Ţerna, & Kiosak, 2016).

Furthermore, important results have been produced by the study of the Bronze Age and the transition period between it and the Iron Age. The Cracow and Rzeszów centres were prime movers in this context. The first step was taken by the expedition headed by Jan Chochorowski and mounted by the Institute of Archaeology, Jagiellonian University, with researchers from the Institute of Archaeology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv, headed by Sergei Skoryi. The exploration of the Scythian Great Barrow in Ryżanówka in 1995–1998 resulted in the discovery of the main tomb, which significantly modified what had been known about that age (Chochorowski et al., 1999; Chochorowski & Skoryj, 2001 ). As a sequel to the discovery came equally spectacular discoveries made within the stronghold in Motronin close to the Great Barrow (Khokhorovski & Skoryi, 2006; Skoryi & Khokhorovski, 2009).

In turn, the Rzeszów archaeological centre headed by Sylwester Czopek set its sights on the study of the Polish-Ukrainian frontier in collaboration with the Archaeological Rescue Service, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Lviv. As part of the endeavour, joint planned investigations of settlement were completed in the drainage basin of the Wisznia/Vishnya River (Czopek et al., 2018). They were a prologue to further studies of the frontier as illustrated by the current exploration of a fortified settlement in Chotyniec, Rzeszów region. It has already rendered spectacular discoveries that modify the picture of the beginning of the Iron Age in Subcarpathia (Czopek, 2020; Trybała-Zawiślak, 2019).

5.1.2 Poznań Programme

As a distant prologue to the Poznań programme, the excavations conducted in 1925 by Józef Kostrzewski in Biały Potok, Podolia, can be considered (Kośko, 2011; Szmyt, 2016). However, it owned its further development chiefly to the “Kuyavia Programme” initiated by Aleksandra Cofta-Broniewska in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It went on to reveal “a record of multidirectional development ties existing in the borderland between the Oder and Vistula drainage basins” including “conspicuous markers of Pontic ties among central European cultures, beginning with the 5th/4th millennium BC” (Kośko, 2011, p. 481). The Kuyavia experience gave rise to a number of cooperation projects carried out in Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus (Kośko, 1981, 1985, 1988, 1990).

The activities of the Poznań centre were given a broader executive framework in the final decade of the twentieth century. This involved inter-institutional agreements made in 1992 by the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań and the Institute of Archaeology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, and later joined by the Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Minsk. The promoters of these agreements planned for a joint selection of research projects as part of common interdisciplinary programmes. They were to cover both indoor studies and – to a limited extent only – field investigations (Kośko, 2011). The latter were undertaken on selected sites in the drainage basins of the Southern Bug (Figure 1): excavations of a Bronze Age barrow in Pechera (2000), and in basins of Horyn (investigations of basalt and copper outcrops, 2000) and Teterev rivers (excavations of a Tripolye settlement in Kornin, 2004). The first two decades of the cooperation, however, were dominated by the need to bring closer together conceptual strategies, including methodological positions.

For this purpose, a cycle of international symposia on the bio-cultural borderland between the East and West of Europe was held at which ideas and experiences were creatively exchanged among the academic centres of Poznań, Kyiv, and Minsk. Four such symposia – in 1997, 2003, 2008, and 2013 – took place in Obrzycko on the Warta, whereas one – in 2000 – in Brest on the Bug. To present the results of joint research, the journal Baltic Pontic-Studies began to be published in 1993, whereas 1997 saw the commencement of the series Archaeologia Bimaris with two sub-series: Monographs and Discussions (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Selected publications discussed results of Intermarine Area Archaeology: journal Baltic-Pontic Studies; series Archaeologia Bimaris – Monographs and Archaeologia Bimaris – Discussions.

5.3.1 Pontic Metallurgical Centres: Carpathian-Volhynia Prologue

The correspondence between the smelting experience of Funnel Beaker culture communities and copper metallurgy of the Tripolye culture was observed during the post-war investigations of so-called large settlements, for instance, in Gródek Nadbużny (Gumiński, 1989, pp. 166–169). Alas, the observation could not be developed any further at that time by conducting analytical physical-metallurgy comparisons between regions, especially as any such endeavour faced Soviet programmes of diagnosing Tripolye metallurgy (Chernykh, 1992).

After 1991, these issues were revisited as part of the research cooperation mentioned earlier between Poznań and Kyiv archaeological centres (see 5.1.1) with the help of Ukrainian physical-metallurgy institutes: Institute of Geology, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and State Scientific Center of Environmental Nuclear Geochemistry. Initially, investigations concentrated on Ukrainian copper deposits – their geography and local physical-metallurgy peculiarities (Klochko et al., 2000; Kłoczko, Manichev, Kompanec, & Kovalchuk, 2003). Since 2003, the programme has had much greater opportunity to expand, owing to an exponential increase in sources: a wave of discoveries by metal-detector users in Ukraine that radically changed the source base as known earlier for the study of Eneolithic-Early Bronze metallurgy in the Intermarine Area.

At that time, a new opportunity opened for the study of the Pontic catchment area within Ukraine’s borders, owing to a project carried out by Klochko and Kozymenko who had the idea to exercise maximum supervision over so-called black archaeology by purchasing metal objects from their “discoverers” and earmarking funds and organizational means to carry out specialist analyses and publish their results (Klochko & Kozymenko, 2011, 2017). The long-term goal of the project was to develop a new periodization scheme of the Pontic Early Metal Age, relying on evidence provided by diagnostic metal objects. In respect of the Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age, these were massive (heavy) metal objects associated, generally speaking, with the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture (Klochko & Kośko, 2020). Encouragement to take up the study of such objects came from earlier archaeological-physical metallurgy programmes focused on the typochronology and topogenesis of the Carpathian-Volhynia metallurgical centre (Klochko, 2001, 2006, 2017; Klochko & Klochko, 2013). The year 2020 saw the publication, announced earlier, of the periodization scheme of the Pontic Early Metal Age (Klochko, Hoshko, Kozymenko, & Klochko, 2020) and an attempt to apply the conception of the Carpathian-Volhynia metallurgical centre to the Baltic portion of the Intermarine Area (Klochko & Kośko, 2020).

Following the discussion on the integration of the Carpathian-Volhynia centre and “Baltic” metallurgical centres (mainly those operated by the Funnel Beaker culture groups on the Vistula), two projects were agreed upon and have already begun to be implemented since then (Klochko & Kośko, 2020, p. 20).

The first involves the application of micro-archaeometric methods to so-called great Funnel Beaker culture settlements to detect any evidence of early metallurgical experiences (cf. Chernovol, 2016) on selected – by non-invasive reconnaissance – diagnostic surfaces. Priority is given in this respect to the settlements that were inhabited synchronously with the Tripolye culture (Phases CI–CI/CII) and the Lublin-Volhynia culture (Phases II–III) – components of the Carpathian-Volhynia metallurgical centre.

The second encompasses comparative analyses, integrated throughout the Intermarine Area, of massive Eneolithic artefacts. They are studied from the angle of taxonomy to lay the groundwork for a broader endeavour: the drawing-up of a “Baltic-Pontic” list of artefacts from the early metal age. In addition, the artefacts are subjected to archaeo–physical–metallurgy analyses.

5.3.2 Stimulation of the Circulation of Ideas and People in the Intermarine Area

The investigations carried out in the 1950s and 1960s on so-called great Funnel Beaker culture settlements encouraged scholars to study the stimulation of the circulation of ideas and people where the East and West of Europe met. The impact of the Tripolye culture on the Funnel Beaker culture (tripolization) was initially studied on the example of lands occupied by the south-eastern group of the FBC, more specifically its Bug subgroup (Jastrzębski, 1985).

The 1970s and 1980s witnessed an important development in these studies. It involved an exponential growth of evidence for tripolization on the Polish Lowland (mainly in Kuyavia), known as the so-called Mątwy cultural component (Kośko, 1981, 1988). It documented “the amalgam of north-Pontic Eneolithic traditions (Sredny Stog and the Tripolye cultures) and those of formally sub-Neolithic (?) groups from the borderland between the taiga and forest-steppe (the circle of the Dnieper-Donets culture, e.g. sites of the Višinki-Mnevo type)” (Kośko, 2010, p. 12). In the set of traits identified with the Tripolye culture, the technological and stylistic traits of pottery attracted special attention such as covering vessel surfaces with mineral and organic pigments (Kośko & Szmyt, 2015) and “cord” impressions among ornamentation motifs (Kośko & Szmyt, 2010). In addition, a Tripolye impact was suggested by a greater use of Volhynia flint in tool making (Libera & Zakościelna, 2011) and clay in building structures (the question of the so-called quasi-ploshchadki; Kośko & Szmyt, 2015).

Since the second decade of the twenty-first century, the investigations carried out in the Rzeszów University in collaboration with Ukrainian and Moldovan partners have revealed ever stronger symptoms of a reverse process: the beakerization of the late, CII-stage Tripolye groups (Rybicka et al., 2019). In this way, it is possible to identify ever more thoroughly mutual cultural ties and routes of exchanging ideas, artefacts, and people where the two large Eneolithic entities met in the bio-cultural borderland between the East and West of Europe in the fourth millennium BC.

5.3.3 Globular Amphora Culture Pontic Exodus

Studies on the eastern European exodus of the Globular Amphora culture opened a new stage of research on the borderland between Eastern and Western Europe. First of all, they encouraged the preliminary identification of the routes joining the Baltic and Pontic areas from the end of the fourth to the middle of the third millennium BC. Work on these issues has been underway since 1995, and its results are gradually revealing the multifaceted and wide-ranging activities of Globular Amphora culture populations that encompassed the vast expanses of eastern Europe (Szmyt, 1999, 2009, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018). They spread all across Volhynia, Podolia, and the Moldavian Upland, forming agglomerations making up the eastern group of the Globular Amphora culture (with three subgroups: Volhynian, Podolian, and Moldavian).

A starting point was the Lublin Upland, where the Globular Amphora settlement flourished from the end of the fourth until the middle of the third millennium BC (Bronicki, 2016; Włodarczak, 2016). From there, settlers probably moved to Volhynia right at the turn of the fourth millennium BC. The movement towards Podolia and the Moldavian Upland was rather quick (Mihailescu-Bîrliba & Szmyt, 2003; Szmyt, 2009).

Initially, the migrations of Globular Amphora culture populations eastwards followed in the footsteps of earlier Funnel Beaker groups. However, in the course of two to three centuries, Globular Amphora communities penetrated more thoroughly the area between the Carpathians and the Dnieper than any of their central European predecessors in the fourth millennium BC. Entirely independent of older experience, the new migration wave brought about a considerable expansion of areas settled by Globular Amphora populations (to include the Moldavian Upland and lands on the middle Dnieper).

Relying on current records, it is possible to distinguish areas settled and controlled by Globular Amphora communities from others where only scattered traces of their settlement are evidenced. The latter, in the form of single, isolated sites are found between the Southern Bug and the middle course of the Dnieper as well as west of the Moldavian subgroup, in Transylvania (Székely, 2002).

The demise of the eastern Globular Amphora group came in the middle of the third millennium BC. Its place was taken then by the communities that combined local patterns with new ideas developed in the Corded Ware and Steppe cultures.

Currently, research focuses primarily on exploring the relationship of the Globular Amphora and Yamnaya cultures (Szmyt, 1999, 2014), i.e. it takes the perspective of Indo-Europeanization processes. It seems that direct contacts between the communities of the two cultures took place in the peripheries of regions they controlled, namely in the forest-steppe. As can be seen from the dispersion of sites, only in the western part of the forest-steppe zone, a clear frontier between areas dominated by the Yamnaya communities and those controlled by the Globular Amphora groups could be reconstructed. It followed the Prut and the middle section of the Dniester, but, of course, did not prevent contacts.

In this context, archaeogenetic analyses are gaining in importance. A series of aDNA studies showed that people connected to the Globular Amphora culture represented in about 70% the so-called ancient farmers ancestry and in 30% the western hunter-gatherers ancestry (Mathieson et al., 2018; Schroeder et al., 2019; Tassi et al., 2017). New light is shed on the matter by recently published analyses that point to the probable influx of Globular Amphora populations into the Yamnaya populations of the north Caucasian steppe (Wang et al., 2019).

5.3.4 Archaeology of Intermarine Area Routes

In connection with the “inter-regional GAC reconnaissance” outlined above into the cultural milieus of the borderland between the West and East of Europe, it is interesting to know that since the turn of the fourth/third millennium BC, there had existed mental chorographies whose general identification (as to methods and attempts to trace them in the field) was discussed at the Obrzycko symposia (Ignaczak, Kośko, & Szmyt, 2011; Klochko, 2008; Kośko, 2014; Kośko & Klochko, 2009, 2013).

One of their key conclusions is the revision of the position of Baltic catchment area populations in the system of neighbour (peripheral) policies of the most active Early Bronze civilizations in this part of the continent, namely, Danube-Carpathian and north Pontic. Prior to 1991, research focused mainly on the Baltic-Danube relations, which reflected both their special position with regard to cultural transformations in East-Central Europe in the third–second millennium BC and almost 50 years of intensive research conceptually inspired by Jan Machnik’s scholarly output (Machnik, 1967, 1977, 1978, 1987).

Against this background, a parallel attempt to assess systematically Baltic-Pontic relations was sorely missed. This was a result above all of delays in the transfer of knowledge on the Bronze Age in the Pontic Area. Restrictions applied mostly to the reanalysis of the investigation results of many thousands of barrows that had been excavated as part of a rescue operation in advance of the Soviet programme of steppe agrarisation implemented from the late 1960s to the early 1990s.

This huge programme of barrow investigations in Ukraine has radically changed our knowledge of many aspects of culture of the Metal Ages. One research trend aims at exposing the Ingul-Donets culture centre of the prologue of the Bronze Age, also known as Ingul-Donets Early Bronze Civilization (Bátora, 2006; Klochko & Kośko, 2009). Another stimulus for this research trend has been the finding that the topogenesis of the “Pontic” markers of Early Bronze cultures in the Baltic catchment area was broader than previously thought (Kośko, 2014).

At present, a key role in the identification of ties between the Ingul-Donets centre and the Baltic catchment area is played by the study of the geography of finds of insignia-type artefacts of a Pontic origin. Such finds appear in the bio-cultural borderland between the East and West of Europe from the middle of the third to the early first millennium BC. These are above all fluted stone maces (Kośko, 2002) followed by shaft-hole axes with a fluted butt, associated with the period of transition from the Early to Middle Bronze Age in the Pontic Area (Klochko & Kośko, 2020). These artefacts indicate connections with the stonework of the Catacomb culture (Sharafutdinova, 1980).

The cultural stimuli from the Ingul-Donets civilization reached the Baltic catchment area along a system of routes (Kośko, 2002, p. 71):

• Southern Bug – Western Bug – Wieprz – Vistula (or Vistula-Nemunas)

• Southern Bug – Western Bug – Vistula (or Vistula – Nemunas)

• Dnieper (or Ingul – Dnieper) – Pripet – Western Bug – Vistula (or Vistula – Nemunas)

• Dnieper (or Ingul – Dnieper) – Byarezina – Nemunas

• Dnieper (or Ingul- Dnieper) – Byarezina – Neris – Nemunas

5.3.5 Proto-Indo-Europeans and Barrow Dispersal in the Cultural Landscape of the Intermarine Area

The rise of barrows in the bio-cultural landscape of the Black Sea catchment area is commonly believed to be a marker of worldview and linguistic transformations and the onset of widespread Indo-Europeanization (Gimbutas, 1980). The process is dated to the final centuries of the fourth millennium BC in the middle Dnieper drainage basin and correlated with Late Neolithic (Tripolye culture, Stage CII) and Early Bronze cultures (Yamnaya culture) (Goslar, Klochko, Kośko, Włodarczak, & Żurkiewicz, 2015). Beginning with the third millennium BC on Pontic steppes and forest-steppes, barrow groups started to serve as important ceremonial centres and land markers (“signposts”) as well (cf. Kośko, 2014, 2015). In the latter function, they marked inter-regional transit routes (see 5.3.4).

The last decade has seen the introduction of cultural landscape questions to the programme of Polish-Ukrainian field research. Systematic investigations of selected key regions of the Ukrainian steppe and forest-steppe have begun, concentrating on the drainage basins of the upper and middle Dniester and the Southern Bug. The spatial layout of a number of fourth–second-millennium BC barrow cemeteries in this context has been identified, with recurrent linear and liner-group arrangements of barrows being commonly recorded on river drainage divides – prominent, most-elevated locations (Kośko, Potupczyk, & Razumow, 2014; Makarowicz et al., 2016, 2019). The barrow arrangements form vast funeral barrow landscapes in which individual cemeteries and their parts are separated from one another by low-lying land. The current research concerns the interpretation of spatial organization principles of selected barrow cemeteries, using state-of-the-art spatial analyses as well as cartographic and geodetic methods (Makarowicz et al., 2019). A similar approach has been taken in the investigations of ritual barrow centres located on the forest-steppe, between the upper Southern Bug and the middle Dniester, Vinnitsa oblast (Rud, Shmit, Vlodarchak, & Zhurkevich, 2020).

One of the crucial regions in these investigations is the upper Dniester drainage basin. In 2009, a programme of field and indoor research was started there to explore the barrow cemeteries of the Middle Bronze Komarów culture. Funds to run the programme were provided by Polish government agencies: National Science Centre and National Programme for the Development of Humanities. Part of the programme is the joint Polish-Ukrainian Upper Dniester Expedition that explored, by non-invasive methods, over 900 new barrows in 2009–2016 (Makarowicz et al., 2016). Furthermore, in 2010–2014, non-invasive methods and excavations were used to explore one of the largest Komarów culture necropolises in Bukivna, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast. The necropolis was revisited by archaeologists after over 70 years from the investigations conducted by Jan Bryk and others (Makarowicz et al., 2016, here further references). The exploration produced many publications in prestigious global-impact journals (to name a few: Hildebrandt-Radke et al., 2019; Kałużna-Czaplińska et al., 2017; Makarowicz et al., 2018, 2019) and a monograph of the necropolis (Makarowicz, Lysenko, & Kochkin, in press).

In 2019, another research programme was begun to trace the cultural change and trajectory of sociocultural development in the barrow cemeteries of the Final Neolithic and Bronze Age. The programme involves surface surveys, non-invasive investigations, and excavations accompanied by analytical examinations such as palaeo-environmental, anthropological, archaezoological, techno-archaeological, palaeopedological, lithological, geochemical, isotopic, and genetic carried out at selected barrow cemeteries in Ukraine’s provinces located on the upper Dniester (Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, and Lviv). So far (2020), a vast necropolis at Myluvannya, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast, has been explored.

Moreover, extensive research is conducted into the questions of migration and kinship in East-Central Europe in the third–second millennium BC. The methodology used, combining traditional archaeological methods and archaeological science, has allowed scholars to take a new approach to the questions of settlement continuation/discontinuation, genetic relationships between the populations of various societies from that period, including diversified ties with steppe population groups (Juras et al., 2020), various scenarios of the under-barrow mortuary ritual, e.g. cremation in so-called mortuary houses (Makarowicz et al., 2021), and finally, the question of the introduction of millet to the western part of the region as an important cereal in the diet of the local Middle Bronze Age communities (Pospieszny et al., 2021).

5.3.6 Baltic Exoduses of Scythians

The Scythian period on Pontic forest-steppe is dated to the late eighth and early seventh centuries BC. The Intermarine Area witnessed then important cultural changes, which, owing to the impact of Scythian nomads, included it in the cultural circulation of the Mediterranean world and its vanguard on the Black Sea shores represented by Greek colonies. Peripheral with respect to them, the forest-steppe attracted settlement investigations centred on Scythian strongholds dispersed on it. The investigations were part of a broader research programme called “Fortresses of Ukraine” carried out by a joint Polish-Ukrainian expedition in collaboration with the Institute of Archaeology, National Academy of Science of Ukraine. Their goal was to identify and make an inventory of strongholds, making up the western, Podolia settlement concentration within the Ukrainian forest-steppe. Excavations and surface surveys carried out in 2008–2016 were a prologue to more extensive research plans aimed at explaining what processes had an impact on the rise and life of Early Iron Age “giant strongholds” dated to the sixth and fifth centuries BC.

The first and foremost problem of the ongoing research is the spatial range of the “Early Iron” stronghold settlement. The dispersion of fortified features ought to provide clues for their correct functional interpretation by finding out whether they formed a route chain (“trading-post arrangement”) or were arranged in a zone, constituting a frontier of settlement range related to possible sociocultural differences. Another problem to be researched is related to the fact that the area under investigation can be considered an important staging point on the “Dniester” and “Volhynia” sections of the transit route, joining – from the fourth millennium BC – the Baltic and Black Sea catchment areas; for it lies in the borderland between the East and West of Europe believed to be the place where the impact of central European agrarian societies and forest-steppe/steppe traditions crossed.

Research results justify moving back the dating of strongholds to a more probable period between the end of the seventh and the middle of the sixth century BC (Ignaczak, Affelski, Boltrik, & Šelehan, 2013). This is consistent with the chronology of activation of nomad peoples in Eastern and Central Europe (Chochorowski, 2009) accompanied by, for instance, destruction of defensive settlements on the middle Dnieper (Trachtemiriv), in Slovakia (Smolenice), and on the Polish Lowland (Wicina and Kamieniec).