Abstract
The work is dedicated to one of the chronicle towns of the Upper Posullia. It has been known in science for more than a hundred years and has been reliably localized in the works of Archbishop Filaret and P. Golubovsky. In the second half of the twentieth century, the settlement of the chronicle town of Viahan was studied by the Posullia archeological expedition led by Yu. Morgunov. During two field seasons in 1972 and 1979, the site of the hillfort, its fortifications and the settlement located around it were excavated. In addition, exploration work was carried out on two satellite settlements located on the high banks of the Tern River. According to the results of research, the general chronology of the complex and its individual components is clarified, the structure of defense structures and the time of their occurrence are investigated. The chronicle town of Viahan emerged at the end of the 11th century as a powerful fortress on the way from the Steppe to Putivl and Novgorod-Siversky. The construction site was chosen on a hard-to-reach island in the middle of the Tern floodplain. In 1147 the fortress finds itself in the vortex of the events of the internecine war between the princes. Vyahan was not taken by the army of Prince Gleb Yurievich, which is evidence of the reliability of the fortifications in contrast to the neighboring Popash. The last mention of Viahan dates back to 1149, when the wives of several princes met near the city before marching on the White Tower. After the end of the war, two outposts were built near Viahan, which controlled the Tern Valley from the upper reaches to the confluence with the Sulu. It was there that an important ford was used by both the Polovtsians and the Russian princes. One of them - the settlement of Babakove - eventually turned into a small feudal estate, and the other - Boyarskoe - remained an observation point. The study of the fortifications of the two settlements indicates two main periods - direct construction and the second - reconstruction. In both cases, the type of wooden structure could not be traced. The cessation of life in the city of Viahan and its outposts is associated with the Mongol invasion of 1239/1240 and the destruction of the left-bank principalities of Pereyaslav and Chernihiv.
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