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The article deals with the materials of the collections of the early Middle Ages, kept in the museums of Barnaul. The main sources of study were items from the collections of the Altai State Museum of Regional Studies, the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography of Altai of Altai State University, and the Museum of Regional Studies of the Altai State Pedagogical University. The published materials are also considered. The purpose of the article is to summarize the available information about jewelry. During the work, a circle of archaeological sites was established in the south of Western Siberia, where they were found. The dating is determined by the time of the Odintsovo and Srostki culture. The information is presented in chronological sequence relative to the year of the excavation. The discovered jewelry is associated with burials. Quantitative indicators of their availability are taken into account. Among the most common products are earrings, beads, pendants, clasps, plaques. The main materials for making jewelry were non-ferrous metal. Bone or horn is less common. Glass, stones and paste were used for beads. The analysis of materials from the collections will allow us to continue work on the formation of a database, as well as on the creation of a classification and typology of jewelry.

The study of the history of the emergence and development of medieval cities in Kazakhstan remains one of the most difficult and important tasks of modern research. A comprehensive study of the sites allows us to determine both the general features of urban development and the peculiarities of the formation of individual urban settlements. The cities of Saraichyq on the Jaiyk River and Barchynkent in the Lower Syr Darya River were not only large trade and economic, but also spiritual centers of the Ulus of Jochi. Having developed as cities during the Mongol period, they played an important role in the political life of the Golden Horde. The fate of Saraichyq and Barchinkent closely connected with the general course of the history of this state. Written sources and materials of long-term archaeological studies indicate that the heyday of both cities coincides with the time of rising, and the beginning of decay and desolation – with the beginning of the collapse of the Golden Horde. The enthronement of khans of Berke, Janibek and other representatives of Juchids in Saraychyq, and then the emergence of a necropolis where a number of rulers of the Golden Horde buried, led to the beginning of the sacralization of the place. By the XIV century, Barchinkent became famous as a city where many preachers of Islam and Sharia scholars lived, who played a signifi cant role in spreading the Muslim religion among the population of the Ulus of Jochi. Excavations in Saraichyq and Barchinkent (Kyshkala ancient urban settlement) made it possible to identify the location and historical names of cities, the time of their emergence and growth, as well as to reveal the peculiarities of their functioning as centers of international trade, crafts and culture.

Glass can be considered a locus of meaning, a material which has been the repository of traditional knowledge and technological expertise for at least three millennia. The history of glass speaks of know-how, technological transitions, and contaminations of recipes for its manufacture, which have changed across the world over the centuries. As the amount of recovered glass from archaeological contexts is much lower compared to ceramic and metal finds, research has often considered glass as a rare material. Furthermore, glass production, in ancient times as in the present day, requires the use of selected raw materials and noticeable amounts of fuel, making reuse and recycling practices necessary to foster sustainability, from both an economical and an environmental perspective. Latin authors, such as Juvenal and Martial, reported buyers of broken glass in Imperial Rome, presumably destined for recycling. Archaeometry has also provided data that allow, today, to clarify different aspects related to production cycles, uses and reuses of a material that, starting from the Roman age, became as common as modern plastics. From beakers and goblets reused with different purposes to mosaic tesserae detached for making new mosaics or to be refused and employed as “pigments” for colouring glass, this paper aims to provide an overview of reuse and recycling practices of ancient glass through a discussion of selected case studies from Roman to Middle Ages, showing how the cycle of this material can be framed as an actual example of sustainable circular economy in the past.

Glass can be considered a locus of meaning, a material which has been the repository of traditional knowledge and technological expertise for at least three millennia. The history of glass speaks of know-how, technological transitions, and contaminations of recipes for its manufacture, which have changed across the world over the centuries. As the amount of recovered glass from archaeological contexts is much lower compared to ceramic and metal finds, research has often considered glass as a rare material. Furthermore, glass production, in ancient times as in the present day, requires the use of selected raw materials and noticeable amounts of fuel, making reuse and recycling practices necessary to foster sustainability, from both an economical and an environmental perspective. Latin authors, such as Juvenal and Martial, reported buyers of broken glass in Imperial Rome, presumably destined for recycling. Archaeometry has also provided data that allow, today, to clarify different aspects related to production cycles, uses and reuses of a material that, starting from the Roman age, became as common as modern plastics. From beakers and goblets reused with different purposes to mosaic tesserae detached for making new mosaics or to be refused and employed as "pigments" for colouring glass, this paper aims to provide an overview of reuse and recycling practices of ancient glass through a discussion of selected case studies from Roman to Middle Ages, showing how the cycle of this material can be framed as an actual example of sustainable circular economy in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The system of Three Courts and Five Gates is an essential content of the designs of the capitals and palaces of ancient China. The Three Courts and Five Gates planning of the Darning Palace is the adoption of this rule and the application to the spatial designing of the palace city. The archaeological fieldwork revealed that within the Darning Palace, the Three Courts pattern with three walls as the borders, and Hanyuan Hall, Xuanzheng Hall, and Ziehen Hall as the centers formed the outer court, middle court, and inner court plan, which was the embodiment of the new interpretation of the Tang Dynasty to the traditional Three Courts and Five Gates ritual system. Through the trimming of the archaeological data fetched in the past 60 years about the southern part, which is the official affair zone, of the Darning Palace, this paper discusses the spatial structure of the Three Courts and Five Gates pattern of the Darning Palace, and analyzes the substantial relationship between this pattern and the political demands of the ruling class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the horrors of the trench warfare on the Western Front in Belgium and France are part of the European cultural memory, to some degree the much more extensive and mobile Eastern Front of the 1914–1918 conflict has become the forgotten front (Die vergessene Front). Although for just over eleven months in 1914/15, the central part of a major front, some 1000 km long on which three million people died ran through the middle of what is now Poland, for a number of reasons the memory of this has there been all but erased from memory and from the cultural landscape. The reviewed three volumes are the result of a project that has attempted to address the poor state of historical memory of the momentous events and human drama that took place a century earlier on the segment of the front, 55 km west of Warsaw. Here, from mid-December 1914, the Russian Imperial army tried to hold back the eastward advance of the German troops on defences built along the Bzura and Rawka rivers. For the next seven months, the fighting here took the form of the same type of prolonged static trench warfare more familiar on the Western Front (the only place in the eastern sphere of war that this happened). The German army made every effort (including mining and several major gas attacks), to advance on Warsaw but failed to break through. It was only after the Great Retreat of the Russian army in the summer of 1915 that these defences were overrun and Warsaw fell.

Systematic studies are conducted at Madzhar settlement by the “Kaffa” expedition of the Institute of Archaeology named after A.Kh. Khalikov of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan within the framework of the State Program of the Republic of Tatarstan “Preservation of the National Identity of the Tatar People (2014–2019)”. Madzhar fortified settlement represents the remains of the Golden Horde town of Madzhar located near the contemporary town of Budennovsk in Stavropol Krai. The work is dedicated to the discovery of a bone article at the fortified settlement in question. A carved bone overlay with a dragon image was discovered at the archaeological excavations of 2016. The bone overlay was found during cleaning of the pavement of a medieval town street. A paved street was discovered in a Golden Horde town for the first time in history. The studied area of the pavement consisted of 174 fragments of locally manufactured defective bricks, 115 sandstones and 127 broken brick fragments. The period of operation of the town street and, correspondingly, the time of loss of the bone overlay correspond to the reign of Djanibek Khan, and has been dated on the basis of 12 coins. The carved overlay was made of thick horn. A four-leaved medallion with a rectangular pointed upper edge dimensioned 72×72 mm, which resembles a lotus bud, features a carved image of a dragon. The symbolics of the dragon image was thoroughly studied. Suggestions are made in relation to the possible location of manufacture of such products and the use of similar articles in the territory of the Mongol Empire.

Excavation CCXVII was investigated in 2016 within the framework of a complex project Cultural Heritage - the Island Town of Sviyazhsk and Ancient Bolgar. The total area of the exposed cultural layer was 256 square metres. A total of 14 structures (5 pits, 4 hearths for ceramics firing, 2 pre-hearth pits, 2 platforms for accessing heating chambers of the hearths and a single auxiliary structure) of the late Golden Horde period were identified in the excavation. The presence of four hearths for ceramics firing, which operated in the period of 1330–1360, can represent a direct evidence of pottery production in Bolgar settlement during the late Golden Horde period. The hearths were destroyed in the early period of the Great Troubles in the Golden Horde (1359–1380) circa the second half of the 1360s. The author suggests that a sanitary burial of 7 people was arranged in the previously abandoned hearth No. 6 (structure 6) during the period in question. As a result of the excavations, the researchers obtained a collection of 741 individual findings, including defective ceramic vessels of a spherical shape, pitchers and an unfired band used for ceramic moulding. The collection of mass material amounts to 8,334 fragments of locally manufactured Bolgar ceramics.

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The article is dedicated to the 60th Anniversary of the Mari Archaeological Expedition and summarizes the two decades of its studies (1996-2016) into the early cultures of the Mari region, starting from the era of the original settlement (Mesolithic), through the Neolithic-Eneolithic, Bronze Age, Early Iron Age and up to the Middle Ages. The expedition studied stations and settlements of primitive cultures, as well as unfortified and fortified settlements and necropolises. Special studies focused on formation and development of the early Mari culture, as well as the material and spiritual culture of the medieval Mari. The expedition continues its survey exploration in order to identify new archaeological sites. During the reported period, twelve monographs were published and three monographs prepared based on the expedition’s materials.

The article presents brief information on the content and findings of the conference “Ananyino World: Cultural Space, Connections, Traditions and Innovations”, which took place in Bolgar on 28-30 November 2016 (Republic of Tatarstan). The Conference was organized by A.Kh. Khalikov Archaeology Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan, Archaeology Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Bolgar State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve. Its participants discussed a vast range of topics concerning the late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age of Northern Eurasia. Particularly, they discussed the issues of chronology and cultural genesis, development of traditional metal processing and ceramic production, religious ideas and motifs of fine art. Special attention was traditionally focused on archaeology of the Ananyino cultural-historical area.

The article devoted to the results of new investigations of Krasnoye Syundyukovo I fortified settlement situated on the right bank of the Sviyaga river in the Ulyanovsk region. The site is one of the pre-Mongol towns of the Volga Bulgaria. A brick bath-house built in the 11th – 12th is its most well-known structure studied in 1991. Archaeological investigation of this site resumed in the summer of 2014. Two digs of 60 m2 (number VI and VII) were organized on the territory of the settlement. Dig VII in the western part of the settlement yielded a household structure (cellar) and numerous and various finds typical for the material culture of the population of a pre-Mongol Bulgar town: local ceramics, metal ware, as well as residues and slag, fragments of clothing and garnishment, etc. Dig VII had a significant number of artefacts associated with crafts and trade, which characterizes the activities of the population.

In this work we present the geophysical methods magnetometry and ground penetrating radar (GPR) as tools used in finding traces of preterit occupations at the archaeological site of Otter Lake, located in the municipality of Penalva, state of Maranhão, Brazil. Because of the size of the area, of about 10,400 m², and the short geophysics campaign, magnetic measurements were performed with a gradiometer, in a sampling grid of 2.5 m. The anomalies found show a thermo-remnant magnetization from the burning of clayl, and also from sources not related to archaeological materials, such as pieces of tack and riding horseshoes, nails and hooks, among others. In locations with anomalous magnetization, 14 GPR profiles were obtained with a 400 MHz shielded antenna in order to locate and differentiate more precisely the archaeological and existing structures. The results presented in this work allowed the verification and evaluation of the potential of geophysical methods as an auxiliary tool in archaeological studies, which has been proven by the success of the indications of the targets and the subsequent excavations which revealed the presence of pottery fragments and coal related to the archaeological site.

The history of archaeological studies on the Bulgar fortified settlement site is briefly reviewed in the article. The first excavation on the site of the monument was made by V. G. Tiesenhausen in 1864. For more than 70 years to follow, the settlement was only sporadically worked on separate sites and objects. The systematic archaeological study of Bulgar headed by A.P. Smirnov started in 1938, and is going on at present. The stratigraphic scale of Bulgar has been developed, which is successfully applied to the study of all Volga Bulgaria monuments. Excavation materials are reflected in various publications, including five books of essays “The City of Bulgar” and in the collection of maps entitled “The Great Bulgar” (2013). Starting 2010, a program for the preservation of the Bulgar fortified settlement site as a museum complex came into effect. Recent studies are conducted using modern technologies, in particular, non-destructive geophysical and aerospace methods.

Sistan, in the eastern half of Iran, is one of the most important archaeological regions from where archaeological sites belonging to the Bronze Age onwards have recovered in abundance. During the Achaemenids, this region was known as Dranka/Zranka that remarkably covered a vast area and population. Greeks called this vast territory as Drangiana. According to Greek historians, Drangiana consisted of two main parts: the northern part was Prophtasia and the southern was known as Agriaspæ/ Ariaspæ. It is said that Alexander the Great spent the winter in Ariaspæ while on his way to conquer India. Greeks called the people of Ariaspæ as Evergetæ (donor). They not only helped Syrus the Great in his war against Massagetai at a time when he was suffered food shortages in the Iranian desert but, they also welcomed of Alexander the Macedonian in the winter when he was going to conquer India. So, I tried to determine the actual location of Evergetæ realm in old Drangiana (Sistan) using historical approach which is based on Greek documents as well as archaeological surveys. During a systematic archeological survey carried out by a large team of archaeologists in the south half of Drangiana (now; Sistan) we identified about 110 Achaemenid era sites also providing further evidences for the significance in connection with the post achaemenids. So, the Evergetæ domain can be distinguished in the delta of Rud-e Biaban that is currently deserted and uninhabited. If it is excavated in some of the sites, will get a lot of information of late Achaemenids and Greeks in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The applicability of the travel-time seismic tomography algorithm with the adaptive environment parameterization for the engineering and archaeological studies is investigated. The investigation object is the environment under the ruins of the St. Onuphrius Church at the Big Solovetsky Island. Experimental geometry for the tomography studies is designed and the data are acquired and processed. The goal is to study in detail the church basement and underlying geological environment structure that can not be recovered with other geophysical methods. The synthetic experiments are performed using the standard checkerboard tests with the cells of 2, 3, and 4 m in size in order to estimate the adequacy of the results obtained. The recovered three-dimensional velocity pattern is in a good agreement with the data on the church and archaeological information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over investigation aimed to perform a complete study of the bone pieces discovered at Porolissum, the OL-5 dwelling. Measurements and determinations of the bone pieces catalogued 833 - took to species differentiation: 482 homed cattle, 48 horse, 42 meat-eaters, 201 ovicaprinae, 53 pigs and 7 birds. Then, we differentiated each species according to age, sex and established the morphoprductive type of these species. The bone pieces were categorised as domestic litter, discovered in the OL-5 dwelling [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]