Except for some excavated coastal sites, the rural hinterland of ancient Chersonesos on the Tarkhankut Peninsula in north-west Crimea has been understood only from pot scatters recorded during landscape survey and fieldwalking. The city's rural territory (chora) thrived from the fourth to second century BC, but little is known of the identity of its inhabitants, especially those in the inland areas. This paper presents the results of the first systematic excavations in this part of the peninsula. The results challenge previous notions that the territory was occupied by nomadic indigenous communities and reveal that the site shared the fate of the entire Chersonesean chora, meeting a violent end in the early part of the third century BC.