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It is the publication of coins of the Latin Empire and Byzantium (during the rule of the Palaeologus) found in the territory between the Prut and the Dniester. There are 30 billon and copper coins, most of which date back to the reign of the Byzantine emperors Andronicus II (1282—1328) and Andronicus III (1328—1341). This period coincides with the active stage in existence of the Golden Horde settlement in Costești. The geography of the coin finds gives the basis to assume that these coins entered the region through Dobruja and further north through the Danube River in the direction of Costești. Coins of the Latin and Byzantine Empires confirm the hypothesis that there were long-term economic contacts between the Golden Horde settlements of the Prut-Dniester and the Balkan-Black Sea region in the period preceding the formation of the Moldavian state.
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The study was conducted to establish the fact and dating of the joint rule of Rhadamsades and Rhescuporis V. The inscription of CIRB 66 and the coins of these sovereigns became objects of this study. We believe that Rhescuporis V was co-regent of Rhadamsades since his assumption of power. Moreover, these sovereigns were not originally equal, judging by the fact that in the first years of their joint rule, only Rhadamsades had the right to emit money. Rhescuporis V received the right to mint his coins after winning a war with external enemies. Rhadamsades and Rhescuporis V jointly ruled the Kingdom of Bosporus until the former’s death.
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The article presents the so called late nomadic pendent amulets from the territories on the Lower Danube. They were cast from different metal alloys. The article is supplied by a catalogue of pendants from Bulgaria, Romania and Moldova and a table with metallographic study of some of the amulets.The pendants are attributed to the late nomads: Pechenegs (Patzinak), Ouzoi, and Cumans, and are dated to the 10th—12th centuries. The author divided the pendants in three groups according to their form: 1) leaf-shaped, 2) rectangular/trapezium-shaped, 3) lunula/palmetto form.
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Archaeological materials (remains of burials, metal, glass and stone wares) of the Uvek site of the Golden Horde time by preserved archival materials are published and briefly characterized in this article. The Uvek hillfort is the largest settlement of the northern part of the Lower Volga region, it is identified as the large Golden Horde city of Ukek and situated in the southern outskirts of modern Saratov. The described archaeological finds have been registered and collected by the Saratov Research Archival Commission and Research Society of regional ethnography ‘Istarkhet’, and then decommissioned and lost for researchers. However, small, and often just minimal information on the found burials and separate objects has been preserved in the Inventory Register of the Museum of the Saratov Research Archival Commission, and in Commission’s archives (their main part is now kept in the State Archive of the Saratov region) and some publications. We have tried to generalize and systematize this information, accompanying the description of archaeological materials (by archival records) with references to the place and time of finds, the person from whom these objects were received, and documents in which they were described. The items listed in the annexed archival materials were obviously found on the Uvek hillfort in 1870s, 1893, 1895, 1897—1898, 1902, 1904—1915 and 1918.
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Fragmented painted pottery is uncovered predominately in the layer and structures of the Cernavodă I culture (the 2nd quarter of the 4th mill. BC). Part of fragments derives from complexes of the Early Iron Age cut into the late Eneolithic layer or is represented by stray finds. According to technological traits the pottery corresponds to painted ceramics of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. Several morphological types can be distinguished: cylindrical-conical bowls, relatively large pots with conical or cylindrical neck, jugs with high cylindrical neck, small widely open pots with globular body and small amphora with vertical handles on shoulders. The painting consists of two main kinds. The first kind embraces geometric or curvilinear ornaments composed from broad crossing or complementary bands which find best parallels mainly in the ornamentation of the Cucuteni B2-Tripolye C1 pottery. The second kind of the painting includes net-like ornament or compositions made of narrow crossing diagonal bands (“sparse net”). This kind of painted design is related only to the small vessels with globular body and amphora. Such morphological and stylistic types can be considered as manifestations of particular ceramic tradition of the Cernavodă I culture probably emerged under influence of the Cucuteni B-Tripolye C1 culture. They are broadly distributed in late Eneolithic graves of the Northwest Pontic region and can be regarded as additional evidence for attributing this territory to the area of the late Eneolithic Cernavodă I culture.
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The grave goods contained in the main burial complex of Zintseva Balka 2/17 (North-Eastern Azov Sea Region), a Pit Grave Cultural and Historical Community site, were very expressive, including a damaged flint biface and a stylized sandstone figurine, which was morphologically similar to the stele from the Early Bronze Age barrows. Analysis of existing analogies showed that use of small stylized stone sculptures, often in combination with cutting tools, was a part of the funerary rite of the cattle-breeding population of the steppe zone of the Early and Middle Bronze Age, reflecting its ideological representations. Presence of such figurines in graves may indicate a special social and/or sacral status of the buried.
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The article deals with the results of studies of the Bronze Age barrows by the Krasnoznamenskaya expedition in the Lower Dnieper region in 1991. Data about 53 burials of Pit Graves cultural-historical community (36), Catacomb Graves cultures (10), Babino culture (2), and the Berezhnovka-Maiovka Srubnaya Graves culture (5) are published here. There are many children's graves among the burials of the Pit Grave culture. The Late Tripolye influences were noted in the funerary rite of the Pit Graves population. Complexes of the Ingul Catacomb culture are the most interesting. The praying pose, as well as the pose typical for the Pit Graves burials (as another evidence of the simultaneous existence of the Pit Graves and the Ingul population), a batch internment, a rare ritual bowl of rectangular shape, sling stones, and a stone ax-hammer were found. Ordinary graves predominate in all cultures.
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In 2011, the Fastov archaeological expedition renewed the research on the barrow cemetery of the Komarov culture of the Trzciniec cultural circle. This cemetery is located on the border of the Zhitomir and Khmelnytsky regions of Ukraine, between the Miropol, Kolodyazhnaya and Kolosovka (the former Voytsehovka), on the left bank of the river Sluch. Earlier excavations on the site, included in archaeological literature under the name of the Voytsehovka cemetery, were conducted by S. S. Gamchenko (1924) and E. F. Lagodovskaya (1949), who studied 14 barrows in two barrowgroups. In 2011—2012 in the newly discovered barrow group no. 3 four barrows were excavated, containing the remains of seven burials. Based on radiocarbon dating and analysis of the ceramic complex, the barrows can be dated by the midddle — the third quarter of 2nd millennium BC. All the mounds were erected on the natural hills of the dune ridge occupied earlier by the settlement of the late Tripolye culture. The publication provides a detailed description of all objects studied in 2011—2012.
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In 2013, the expedition of Luhansk National University conducted rescue archaeological research at the Late Bronze Age settlement Mechetne-2 near Kamenka village in the Lugansk region, Ukraine. The remains of two stone buildings exposed to the intensive devastation were studied. The house-building traditions and ceramic assemblages belong to the Srubnaya (Timber-grave) cultural and historical community. The material found in the filling and on the floor of the buildings belongs to the early stage of Berezhnovka-Maevka Srubnaya culture.
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Eight pins with a plate-shaped rhombic head, one mould for making such pins and one pin with a head in the form of a triangular flap were found on the territory of modern Ukraine. The distribution area of these types of pins does not go beyond the steppe and forest-steppe zones of the Dnieper Right Bank and the North-Western Black Sea region. The earliest finds of such pins are connected with the funerary complexes of the early and early classical stages of the Komarov culture of the Trzciniec cultural circle (the second quarter — the middle of the 2nd millennium BC). Later they spread to the area of the Sabatinovka-Noua-Coslogeni cultural circle (Dnieper Right Bank steppe, Moldova, Romania), where they are known in settlements and hoards of the third quarter of the 2nd millennium BC. This publication provides a detailed description of all the pins of these types, originating from the territory of Ukraine.
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The article publishes a set of bronze items from the Novocherkassk hoard found in 1939 in the basin of the Lower Don. This hoard is one of the main archaeological complexes, which served as the basis for chronology of the pre-Scythian period. The finds are examined against a broad background of analogies related to the characteristic articles of the North Caucasus production centers in the second half of the 8th — the first half of the 7th cc. BC.
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The paper aims to survey current systematizing developments for the osseous industries dated back to the 6th—2nd centuries BC in the Northwest Pontic area. These trends, however, appear to be applicable to any of the many worked-bone-containing parts in the whole archaeological oecumene. The readers are introduced to the classificatory concepts which only have been explicated in parts elsewhere. Basically, the North Pontic archaeologists definitely used to seek their worked bone archaeological record to be completely imposed into classification. Yet any kind of such classifications normally contains impermeable inherent limits set up by the researchers themselves, who usually face a scarcity of comprehensive expert data. Here, some special solutions to the problem are put forward based on systemic classificatory approach. The approach refers to the osseous raw material structures and the ways they have been transformed during manufacture. The technoclasses concept of adapting, modifying, and converting bone and antler during utilization goes back, in particular, to Andrei Borodovskiy’s technological systematics. The traceological studies, in turn, tend to embed all identifiable objects into a system, since many more different means of functional analysis would work as verifying methods. At the same time, the artefacts’ technical functions and the manners they were used are the issues of special research concern. Further, the ways past equipment including instruments, implements, and accessories might have affected on or interacted with objects and substances, resulted in rational shapes and use-wear patterns in artefacts. The entities of tools, devices, joints, furniture, andparaphernalia seem to be quite perceptive to the variability in worked bone and antler record. This kind of arrangement may have been flexibly changed in terms of its units and even sections hierarchy, whereas its principal ideas are here to stay with no need them to be rearranged.
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The division between the dimensional groups of blade weapons is conditional and, probably, the boundary between them can vary from one epoch to another. The analysis of variation series of such features as “total length” and “blade length” showed the heterogeneity of the sample (more than 800 ex.) and the existence of several functional standards. Five groups were distinguished: daggers (with a blade length of up to 21 cm), short swords (21—37 cm), medium swords (38—53 cm), long swords (54—75 cm) and extra-long swords (with a blade length in excess of 75 cm). Mapping of spearheads and axes also made it possible to reveal some regularities. It became obvious that it is possible to build a typological grouping of regions on the basis of the contents of weaponry and move from small cultural groups to cultural blocks, enclaves, communities of people who preferred similar types of weapons. The counting of the degree of similarity by the method of classification by unequal features demonstrated several such enclaves: “Carpathian” one, where the greatest degree of similarity was manifested between Western Podolian, Transylvanian and Moldavian groups. The main types for this enclave are a dagger or a short sword and an axe. The next, “Steppe” block includes the Lower Danube, Lower Dniester, South Carpathian and South Danubian groups, in which the spearheads and medium or long swords are widely distributed. The third, “Western” block united the Hungarian and Polish groups, for which the axes and spearheads are more characteristic.
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In 2017, barrow 116 of the Scythian cemetery of the 3rd—2nd centuries BC near Glinoe village, Slobodzeya district, on the left bank of the Lower Dniester Region was investigated. Two burials in the catacombs were studied under the mound, surrounded by a ring ditch with two ruptures. A paired children's burial was made in the northern burial chamber of the main grave 116/1, accompanied by an unusual inventory — a three-tiered torque, a pair of gold earrings, a silver multi-turned bracelet, two belt buckles with images of men's faces, a bronze mirror with an iron handle in a sheath, two conical and two flat trapezoidal pendants, as well as a bunch of composite adornments from beads. Wooden coffin was built to bury a man — a noble warrior in the eastern burial chamber of this catacomb. Three fibulae were found on the skeleton in addition to a representative set of weapons, adornments and a hand-made bowl. Also a warrior was buried in the secondary grave 116/2, a pair of long fighting knives lay near the body. Barrow 116 dates back to the third quarter of the 3rd century BC on the basis of the fibulae of the Early La-Tene construction and fragments of Heraclean amphora from the ditch.
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The article is dedicated to the publication of Hellenistic burial complex investigated on the territory of Ak-Kaya necropolis in 2015. There were 4 burials and 2nd—1st cc. BC diverse implements investigated in underground catacomb. Most interesting was a big oval Celtic type schield with numerous iron components — the first such find in Nortern Black sea region. There its detailed description and reconstruction, analogies and similar finds from the territory of Bosporan Kingdom and Chersonesos in the article.
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Pahoshcha barrow cemetery is located in the Braslau district of the Vitsebsk region of the Republic of Belarus. The study of the site was conducted throughout 2005—2009 by the archaeological expedition under the guidance of the author. Barrow 5 can be dated to the boundary of the 10th—11th centuries — the beginning or the first decades of the 11th century. The barrow contained two inhumation burials which were placed in some kind of wooden structure, probably made of boards. The main male burial is exceptionally rich in assortment of grave goods. Features of the burial rite make it possible to classify mound 5 to the circle of quasi-chamber burial antiquities of Ancient Rus.
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O. N. Trubachev’s hypothesis is considered in the context of modern knowledge of archaeology and history, as well as in the context of toponomic landscape of the region. The author found out that the hypothesis refers to the knowingly later historical events, compared to the time of appearance of the oikonym. So, the hypothesis needs a significant modification, at least. Basing on the analysis of the toponomic context of the region, the author suggest that the appearance of the oikonym Suzdal was caused by the first wave of Slavic migration to the Volga-Klyazma region. This migration brought a toponomic model that consists of prefix Su- and final -ь to the region. The author also suggests that appearance of Suzdal as oikonym was preceded by use of Suzdal as a hydronym (the old name of the Kamenka river, presumably) or a toponym which named a larger topographical object (Suzdal high plains as a whole).
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