rather than a linguistic category. Although largely sedentary, at least one Roman writer, Tacitus, stated that the Bastarnae had adopted some Sarmatian customs. So far, no archaeological sites have been conclusively attributed to the Bastarnae. The archaeological horizon most often associated by scholars with the Bastarnae is the Poienesti-Lucaseuca culture.

From the first records which mention them, the Bastarnae were active in the region of the Danube