Suchergebnisse

The article deals with the questions of the spread of Christianity on the territory of the Old Russian Polack Land (Principality of Polotsk) based on materials from the funerary sites. The "focus group" of the study included those children, whose burials were discovered during excavations on the 11 th—13 th centuries necropolises. Separately, an important problem is considered: how the number of children's burials uncovered on the Old Russian period necropolises correlates with the calculations of the normal level of infant mortality in a traditional agrarian society. An analysis of the available data suggests that the children were often involved in the processes of Christianization from an early age, which was reflected materially, including their grave goods. As a result, the children of the 11 th—13 th centuries in Polotsk entered the world of the dead with Christian paraphernalia much more often than adults.

The book "A Viking Century Chernihiv Area from 900 to 1000 AD" is a thematic collection of articles devoted to the study of archaeological sites of the Lower Desna Region and, first of all, the key centers of the era of the formation of the Old Russian state, i.e. Chernihiv and Shestovytsya. The publication of the collection has become an important scientific phenomenon both for the archeology of Southern Rus' and in the general context of the study of the Viking Age Eastern European antiquities. The content of the articles reflects the present-day stage in the development of the Lower Desna Region archeology.

The paper deals with survey data recorded in 2021 in Uzbekistan by joint team of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography SB RAS, Warsaw University, and National Center of Archaeology Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Based on 2018-2019 data, we carried out local excavations, and the Paleolithic artifacts were recorded in the cross-sections of two sites—Ertashsai-12 and Kuksarai-2 located on the right side of the Akhangaran valley in its midstream. The stratified archaeological material of Ertashsai-12 occurs in three lithological positions (layers 2b, 3, and 4) and is represented mainly by fragments of flakes and wastes of lithic production. Together with the surface complex, these materials can be attributed to the Middle to Upper Paleolithic. Materials from the Kuksarai-2 site are more representative; they occur in four layers (layers 2, 3, 5, and 6). In total, the lithic collection includes 43 artifacts. The technical and typological characteristics of the stratified part of the Kuksarai-2 collection are consistent with the appearance of the exposed materials and contain features of the Levallois technology with an admixture of features transitional from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic. The material complexes of Ertashsai-12 and Kuksarai-2 discovered in the buried state are probably correlated with periodic and long-term visits to these territories by human paleopopulations, and the ancient population was a carrier of the Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic process skills. In future, the presence of stratified complexes in the landscape situation of low mountains with the process features of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic can provide a new array of data on the problems of correlating features of the material culture with specific species of ancient hominins, as well as in the context of their relationship with the environment.

In spring 2020, a hoard of Roman silver coins was discovered near the village of Khmelivka in the north of the Zhytomyr Oblast (Ukraine). In the summer and autumn of the same year, archaeological research was carried out on the site, and another coin was found. The hoard consists of 63 Roman imperial denarii, issued by seven emitters: Vespasian, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Commodus and Septimius Severus. The chronological pattern of the hoard is typical for the territory of the Chernyakhiv Culture. It is of type D, subtype D-3 according to A. Dymowski and K. Mygin's typology, and finds analogies in other parts of Barbaricum. However, the hoard is unique in other ways: firstly, it is one of the few finds in Eastern Europe that have been examined archaeologically; secondly, it is one of the most northern finds from the Roman Period in Eastern Polesye. This region has traditionally been considered particularly important for studying cultural genesis in Eastern Europe in the first half and middle of the first millennium AD.

Archaeological investigations carried out at the early medieval cemetery in Ciepłe
in northern Poland have yielded arms and equestrian equipment deposited in chamber
graves belonging to the local elite. This study is based on elements of equestrian
equipment and horse harness which were found in graves 35, 42 and 43. Based on the few
metallographic analyses of European iron spurs, stirrups and bits dated between the 10th
and 11th centuries, it may be suggested that the artifacts from Ciepłe were forged from
bloomery low-carbon metal with low to medium phosphorus content. The objects and their
parts (bits) are single- and multiple-piece forgings of varying degrees of complexity.
The greatest skill was required in the manufacturing of stirrups, which in the case of
the Ciepłe set are all composite products, each welded from two or three pieces of iron.
Also included in this group are the bit sides from grave 43, both of which were made by
joining together two chunks of metal. The remaining items, i. e. mouthpiece links, side
plates, rings of horse bits, spurs, separators for stirrup leathers and bridle ferrules
are hot formed objects, forged from single pieces of iron. All of the non-ferrous metal
decorations of the equestrian equipment and horse harness were made in the so-called
false damascening technique. The surface of the plating was also sometimes decorated
with an additional negative drawing, sometimes lavish and rich in detail.