The article gives a brief overview of recent achievements in the study of Djakovo-type sites located in the Moskva river basin. The chronological time frames are from the eighth to seventh centuries BC to the sixth to seventh centuries AD. The most important inferences are based on the results of the excavations of the Djakovo hill-fort carried out from 1981 to 1987. The abundant finds correspond well to the radiocarbon dates. Two peaks of human activity at Djakovo-type sites occurred in the fifth to the third centuries BC and the first to the fourth centuries AD. Agriculture and cattle breeding formed the economic basis. Bronze ornaments and clay cult artefacts prove the idea that the population of the Moskva river basin had a tribal identity in the first half of the first millennium AD.