THE EUROPEAN STEPPES IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Volume 2
More than a year has passed since the first volume of "The European Steppes in the Middle Ages" series was published - the rather big period of time for the 21st century rapidly entering into a new epoch. This time was enough to make the following conclusion: the initial principles of formation of the series obviously require correction. The reason for that became the problems which solving, to our big satisfaction, has appeared to be interesting though not easy. The appearance of the series in the medieval study archaeology has wakened the enhanced attention to it which has expressed, for example, in the quite big incoming of materials in the editorial office. Their contents and volume have predetermined the formation of the two separate volumes by a chronological principle. The papers on the early medieval time, which have appeared to be the most prepared for publishing for today, was included in this volume. The materials on the Polovtsy and the Golden Horde time, which constituted the separate volume, for some reasons are obviously pushed aside on the back burner to our big regret. But they are also being prepared for publishing. Thus, it is necessary to ascertain that the thematic orientation of our series has transformed as though of itself, naturally, having broken within the limits of the Middle Ages for two periods: the early and the developed time.
We have to admit that the initial chronological orientation of the series within the limits of the 4th - the 17th centuries has also had no justification. The matter is that the number of the received materials has appeared to be much more than we expected and this allows and even demands to narrow the top chronological limits. We have decided to limit them by the 14th century - the period of the ending of the developed Middle Ages epoch in the Eastern Europe steppe zone.
There are 14 papers in the volume, from Ukraine (11) and Russia (3), whose chronological frames cover the 5th - the 11th cc. It is obvious that the limits are certainly wider than the Khazar period which is mentioned in the name of the volume but we did not aspire to fit it by all means. In a certain sense it is even useful as we have received an original cultural and historical background at which presence it is possible to effectively judge of specificity of an archaeological material.
From our point of view, the historical content of the majority of manifestations of the Saltovo-Mayaki cultural life is in a searching stage. The experts in the Khazarian study have more than once pointed out that the accumulation of the archaeological material leaves far behind the depth of research analysis. On this background the papers of historical and cultural character in many directions of the Khazarian study look obviously hasty, "crude" to a certain degree. This process objectively reflects a quite low level of the Archaeology and the Humanities integration not to mention the exact sciences, and it reflects also an absence of a proper level and purity of experiment in application of methodical approaches in research practice.
A problem of ethnic origin and anthropological appearance of the Khazars is still debatable as well as for all other archaeological cultures and epochs. The very scanty and discrepant data of written sources on this problem are not enough confirmed by archaeological materials so far. But as long as the ethnic problematic is in the first place actualized in research centers today and seminars on the Khazarian study become normal for scholars a certain success should be expected in this question in the nearest future.
Problematical character of revealing the Khazarian ethnos itself grounded on an archaeological material should be explained, except for many other factors, by the repeated (according to the narrative data) migrations of the Khazars and changing their religion which influenced most of all on cultural traditions stability. In the circumstances we have to agree with those researchers who consider distinguishing of only one or two types (with variants) of the Khazarian funeral ceremonialism as erroneous since it has had, without any doubt, the essential distinctions in time and space, which couldn't be culturally identified between themselves.
Let's hope that the given collected papers containing the very diverse facts of the Khazarian time which are presented together in such a great volume for the first time will form a good base for the future researches. One more hope is that they will be carried out by collective efforts not only of archaeologists, but also at close co-operation of the last with anthropologists, ethnographers, linguists, religion researches, numismatists, astronomers and other scholars. While it is shown only in rare parallel publications, the common thematically close coordinated works are even rarer.
The author of the project A.V.Yevglevsky
