RESEARCH RESULTS OF THE MEDIEVAL SETTLEMENT IN THE VILLAGE OF KHOTYN IN HORYN

Abstract

Until recently, the Khotyn hillfort was an under-researched monument of medieval defensive construction in Pohorynna. Its dating remained debatable, and although on the site of this fortification as early as the first half of the 20th century materials from the pre-Mongol era were collected, in the catalogs of hillforts of the 10th—13th centuries there is no information about him. The Khotyn settlement is located on a promontory on the high left bank of the Horyn river. The site, surrounded by an earthen embankment, has a pear-shaped plan with dimensions of 110 Ч (45—65) m, rises above the river floodplain by 9—10 m. The arrow of the cape has the appearance of a separate hill in the form of a truncated cone, its top is rounded, horizontal, with a diameter of 7—8 m. The cultural layer has a thickness of up to 0.75—0.85 m. Thanks to the excavations carried out in 2020—2021, new archaeological sources were obtained, which testify to the existence of settlements here in the Bronze Age, the Early Iron Age, as well as in the Middle Ages. Three stages of settlement of the monument in the Middle Ages are distinguished: early (10th — beginning of the 11th century); middle (middle of the 12th—13th centuries); late (15th — first half of the 16th century). Features of the planning of the Khotyn hillfort (a fortified site with an area of 0.6 hectares and a separate rise in the form of a truncated cone with a rounded platform on the top) allow us to conclude that the Slavic hillfort of the end of the 1st millennium BC. in the 13th century was rebuilt into a castle of the «motte and bailey» type (a hill with a tower and a yard).