«Славянская колонизация» Водской земли: историография, проблемы, новые подходы
“Slavic Colonization” of the Vod’ Land: historiography, problems, new approaches

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the main problems of historiography and the current state of the archaeological study of the formation of the old Russian “barrow culture” on the territory of the Vod’ land of Veliky Novgorod. This process is traditionally regarded as Old Russian agricultural colonization and is associated with the massive influx of the Slavic-Russian population into the Izhora Plateau at the turn of the 11th—12th centuries. The origin of this population, the interaction of local Baltic-Finnish and alien Slavic-Russian groups, the difference in the historical fate of Finnish communities on the watershed Izhora Plateau and surrounding lowlands are not completely clear. The origin of the ritual of burial in a sitting position, the most common in this region in the 12th—13th centuries, is also not completely clear. The discussion questions include ethnogenesis and the area of the Vod’, the question of the meaning of the terms “Vod”, “Vozhane”, “Chud”, “Chudtza” and the allocation of the corresponding antiquity groups. We suggest expanding the traditional circle of historical sources by attracting population genetics data. The authors introduce the first results of studying the genetic diversity of the medieval population of the Izhora Plateau from archaeological sites associated with the Old Russian and Baltic-Finnish groups.

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