Newly Discovered Settlement of the 14th – 15th Centuries On Kerch Peninsula (preliminary report on 2018 research materials)

The paper features the materials of exploratory studies conducted in 2018 on the northeastern tip of the Kerch Peninsula in the area of Osoviny settlement. The activities on the determination of the boundaries of Osoviny-I settlement resulted in the discovery of cultural layers in pit 3 above the layers of the ancient period (1st century B.C. – 3rd century A.D.) associated with a previously unknown settlement of the 13th – 15th centuries. The remains of 6 slab graves previously attributed to the 8th – 10th centuries were revealed in the immediate vicinity of the 3rd pit. Layers of the pit dated the 13th – 15th centuries contained architectural remains of a semicircular wall oriented in the eastern direction constructed with the use of clay mortar. The discovery allowed to suggest that the Late Medieval cemetery chapel was located at the site of research, and propose a new earlier dating for the remains of the slab burial ground. The revealed cultural layers of the 13th – 15th centuries allowed to localize a previously unknown village of the Golden Horde period on the coast of the Kerch Peninsula, which was given a reference name of Osoviny – Vostochnoye in the course of field work. The medieval name of the newly discovered settlement – Cubatuba - was established on the basis of an analysis of the contents of a Genoa document dated 1393. In the period of its existence Kubatuba settlement was presumably included in the rural outskirts of the town of Vosporo, part of the Genoese territory in the Northern Black Sea region – the Genoese Gazaria.