Ancient Russian Belt Buckles and Details of Belt Sets of the Late 12th—13th Centuries from the Excavations of the Large Fortified Settlement near Shepetovka

The article deals with metal details of Old Russian belt sets of the late 12th — and first half of 13th centuries discovered during the excavations of 1957—1964 at the Large Fortified Settlement near Shepetovka in the Khmelnytsky region of Ukraine. They revealed belt buckles and copper alloy rings located in the settlement’s military defeat layer. In Russian historiography, the territories of the North-West and North-East of ancient Russia still remain the main region of study of medieval belt sets. The chronology of medieval toreutics on the territory of Eastern Europe, including buckles, is based on the works dedicated to the chronology of ancient Novgorod. According to the author, the Shepetovka finds, for the first time, allow researchers to study a narrowly dated Old Russian collection of buckles that were in use on the eve of the Mongol invasion of Southern Russia. The author presented a classification of buckles based on their morphological features and considered their planographic distribution at the settlement. The study has shown that the complex of buckles from the Large Fortified Settlement near Shepetovka had pronounced regional features and differed significantly from the Novgorod and other archaeological collections of Old Russian towns of Northern Russia.