MULTICULTURAL SETTLEMENT KASTYKI II IN THE VILIJA UPPER REACHES: RESEARCHES OF 1973, 2016 AND 2018

Abstract

Kastyki ІІ settlement is the part of the complex of archaeological monuments located in the eastern part of the village Kastyki of Lyudvinova village council, Vileika district, Minsk region. It also includes the barrow cemetery of the mid-11th—12th centuries. The complex of archaeological monuments is located on the right bank of Vilija in 2.5 km from the confluence of Servač River.
 The first excavations at Kastyki were made by K. Tyshkevich who unearthed here one damaged mound which did not contain any burial and equipment. In 1973 J. Zviaruha made a plan of the necropolis and discovered 7 burial mounds in it. In 2016 M. A. Plavinski resumed excavations at Kastyki. As a result total area of 166 m2 was excavated, mound 4 was excavated, and the cultural layer of the settlement was explaned. In 2018 in order to clarify the limits of distribution of the cultural layer and its dating the pit of 12 m2 was additionally excavated.
 Materials from the excavation of the burial mounds suggest that belonged to a group of residents of the Polotsk land who made burials according to the rite of inhumation on the basis of burial mounds with their heads directed to the west. This, in turn, suggests that the members of the Old Rus community, which left the necropolis in Kastyki, had a certain understanding of the Christian burial rites.
 Analysis of materials excavated in 1973, 2016 and 2018 allows to determine that the multicultural settlement of Kastyki ІІ functioned for a long time. In the cultural layer under the mounds, in the intermound space, as well as in the reworked cultural layer which mounds consist of, the materials of the late Neolithic period and the early Bronze Age, vessels of the late hatched pottery culture and the second quarter of the 1st millennium AD, artifacts and pottery sets characteristic for the third quarter 1st millennium AD have been discovered.
 Despite the relatively small area of the excavations the fact of discovery of the settlement with the late layers of Hatched pottery culture and Bantserovshchina culture is of real scientific value, since such settlements, not adjacenting to the hill forts, have not been unearthed on the territory of Belarusian Vilija Region.