Ребенок в мире мертвых: христианин или язычник (по материалам раскопок погребальных памятников Полоцкой земли древнерусского времени)

Abstract

The article deals with the questions of the spread of Christianity on the territory of the Old Russian Polack Land (Principality of Polotsk) based on materials from the funerary sites. The “focus group” of the study included those children, whose burials were discovered during excavations on the 11 th—13 th centuries necropolises. Separately, an important problem is considered: how the number of children’s burials uncovered on the Old Russian period necropolises correlates with the calculations of the normal level of infant mortality in a traditional agrarian society. An analysis of the available data suggests that the children were often involved in the processes of Christianization from an early age, which was reflected materially, including their grave goods. As a result, the children of the 11 th—13 th centuries in Polotsk entered the world of the dead with Christian paraphernalia much more often than adults.