Research in the village of Jaskavičy-1 in 2018: to the study of the monuments of the «pre-Prague culture» horizon in Belarusian Polesia

Abstract

Unfortified settlement near the Jaskavičy village, Salihorsk District, Minsk Region is located on the northern margin of Pripyat Polesia. The settlement was discovered in 2017 by H. M. Byalickaya, researcher from the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. In 2018, archaeological investigation of the settlement was continued by an expedition of Belarusian State University and an area of 364 m2 was excavated there. Two dwelling structures (a log hut and a hut with post walls) and household structure, and several other features were excavated during field seasons of 2017 and 2018. This article deals with the major part of obtained materials that belong to the Roman period. Preliminary, this horizon on the settlement can be synchronized with phases B2/C1–C1a – C2–C3 according to the Central European relative chronology and roughly can be dated to the period from the second part of the 2nd century or the boundary of the 2nd and 3rd centuries till the beginning or the middle of 4th century AD. Analysis of pottery, most prevalent tools – clay spindle whorls as well as adornments and pieces of clothing allows to attribute the settlement to the Kyiv cultural circle. Based on the finds from the dwelling structures and their surroundings, it can be assumed that the residents of the settlement were specialized in working with non-ferrous metals and, probably, in iron production. Imports from the Wielbark culture are registered among metal items and, occasionally, fragments of pottery. These imports are the evidences of contacts between community of Jaskavičy-1 settlement and foreign population – the Goths who had started to penetrate territories in the middle flow of the Pripyat river from the end of the 2nd century AD. The Jaskavičy-1 settlement, most actively occupied in the Late Roman period (3rd – middle 4th century AD), can become the reference site of the Kyiv cultural circle for the territory of the Central Polesia. Even preliminary results of archaeological investigations there allow to state that the chronological lacuna between Polesian settlements of post-Zarubintsy period (middle 1st–2nd century AD) and the earliest (of phase «0») settlements of the Prague culture form the Migration Period (which is associated with Slavs people) is being filled. Hence, at the Jaskavičy-1 settlement we have got a new argument supporting the theory about the beginning of formation of culture of the early Slavs in the territory of Pripyat Polesia.