What do we really know about the origin of the Slavs? Not that much, as it turns out. Although almost every Slavic country had been put forward as the historical homeland, the gaps in knowledge are too big for certainty.
The Pripyat (or Pripet, or Pinsk) Marshes, a huge are straddling the modern Ukrainian-Belarusian border is perhaps the best candidate for the Slavic urheimat, but the question is far from closed.
Here is a landscape from the region, known as Polesia, by classic Russian landscape painter Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898)
and this blog post by Jacob Shell has some interesting photos taken in 1934 by American geographer Louise A. Boyd showing life in the marshes.
Besides this northern part of Ukraine, the Slavic urheimat has been proposed in southern Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Bohemia, and on the Volga.
Archeological studies have focused mainly on pottery. As you can see in these images, the Slavic style was handmade, rather than cast on a potters wheel.
Ceramic artefacts at Prague Museum (image credit: Zde)
Pots from Poland (image credit: Silar)
Other key indicators of Slavic settlement are taken as sunken houses, log built with a corner oven, and cremation burials.
A reconstruction of sunken houses found at Roztoky, Czech Republic. (Image credit: Sebastian Brather)
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