THE EUROPEAN STEPPES IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Volume 1
This volume represents an attempt to organize at contemporary territory of the former USSR a publishing of a series of chronologically comparatively narrow (the IVth - the XVIIth cc.) edition. Thus we shall make a reservation that a sequence, frequency and direction of research of the edition will depend on, first of all, a level and degree of preparedness of materials which come to the editor-in-chief's portfolio. The priority will be given to analytical papers by nature with a wide range of illustrative material. The indispensable condition is an academic style of writing and using of greater number of methods, primarily cartographical.
The conceived series is original in the sense that it will be oriented on two forms of publication of papers. The first form is a publication of papers grouped in separate blocks according not to their themes directivity but to the kind of source corpus. It means that we shall aspire to that we have got papers not only on archaeology itself, but also on ethnology, anthropology, epigraphy, numismatics, and semiotics. However, at the same time the research analysis to some extent constructed in an archaeological context should be an indispensable condition of investigation. The second form is a publication of monographs and probably of corpuses of sources which are resemble to the well-known corpuses of archaeological sources. We hope that such approach will draw attention of many archeologists, who are interested in medieval history, as well as ethnographers, anthropologists, numismatists, linguists and other scholars of related fields and will help to jointly understand the source base collected so far and to reconstruct historical and cultural processes of the past.
The series is declared to be open for all experts including those from abroad who are interested in the Middle Age steppe cultures and base their research upon an archaeological data. The contributors are restricted neither in size nor in theme of paper, but we have to point out that papers must be performed at a high professional level, well illustrated and to be of analytical character.
The editor-in-chief chooses a kind of the next edition; he also selects the papers and makes a primary editing. Then the whole formed material is given to the editorial board for an in-depth study and confirmation. The papers prepared for publishing will be given to at least two scholars of authority for reviewing if necessary, and in this connection we intend to cooperate regularly, first of all, with Institutes of Archaeology of Russian Academy of Sciences, of Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences, and of Moscow State University. Then it will be consistently recommended for publishing firstly at the Faculty of History of Donetsk State University, secondly at the Academic Council of University and, at last, at the Publishing Council of Institute of Archaeology of Ukraine's National Academy of Sciences.
The author of the project and the compiler A.V.Yevglevsky
