THE EUROPEAN STEPPES IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Volume 5
Representing in 2000 the 1st volume of "The Steppes" as the collection of papers and putting tasks on prospect we connected our hopes for the development of the series with a publishing of monographs also. It was carried out in the 5th volume. Such an outstanding event was made a reality due to the intensive research activity of Kiev archaeologist A.V.Komar. The researcher has taken upon oneself the initiative of full-fledged introduction to scholars a range of the long time ago excavated burials of the early Middle Ages nomads of a steppe zone of the Northern Black Sea Coast. But his main efforts for the last five years have been concentrated at the preparing of the critical research on reconsideration of the well-known Pereshchepina complex. Due to the system approach and mainly to the impressive volume this work could be rightfully consider as monographic. This in its turn means that we have the monograph within the limits of our edition (the collection by definition).
Such an unusual by its structure the volume of "The Steppes" opens itself by the largest of the papers placed in it - the profound analysis of the monument which has been found near the Malaia Pereshchepina village. The Pereshchepina complex more known as "the hoard" since its discovering in 1912 periodically draws experts' attention and the number of the researches devoted to it invariably increases. In 1996 C.Balint wrote that the full comprehension of Pereshchepina find is yet to come, and it can really happen only after the publication of the whole material of the complex. Today we can establish that these both events have happened. The monograph exhaustively describing the monument was published in 1997 due to the collective of the Hermitage workers and the new analytical monographic research considering it in a wider context of the main problems of history and culture of the Eastern Europe nomads of the 7th - the beginning of the 8th cc. is placed in this volume.
One of the conclusions of the monograph is that the problem of Pereshchepina and resembled complexes represents only the first part of the dualistic system of the Pereshchepina culture. The ordinary population burials in barrows are on the second pole of the system; they have been traditionally grouped in "Sivashovka type" since 1985. This term was commonly used in spite of the fact that the burial 2 of Sivashovka barrow 3 of itself and a diversity of resembled burials was published only in part with the total characteristic of only the most attractive things. So, from 23 burials served to R.S.Orlov as the basis for determining the Sivashovka type only 5 were published by the moment of his paper's appearance. In other words, after 20 years since the definition of the cultural type of monuments, 14 of 24 of his "bearing" burials still remain not introduced to scholars entirely. It is quite obvious that in the circumstances of source study deficiency the publication of the trustworthy early Middle Ages nomads' burials especially the eponym one (the burial 2 of Sivashovka barrow 3) obtains the paramount role. The addition of the monograph by the publication part introducing to scholars 10 burials of the 2nd half of the 6th - the beginning of the 8th cc. was to a considerable degree prompted by the circumstances. But this is the kind of the book that has really covered the main problems of the period: the correlation of the ordinary population monuments of Sukhanovo type with the monuments of Sivashovka type and the last ones with the supreme nobility monuments of Pereshchepina type.
A.V.Yevglevsky
