Technical and technological features of the pottery in Mordovia

Abstract

Introduction. The article considers to the features of pottery and brings the results of the research of pottery technology which was common on the territory of Mordovia. An in-depth, systematically organized culturological approach to the study of artistic ceramics and ancient ornaments on pottery allows the author to study a wide range of issues of ancient history, which until now have been resolved mainly on an intuitive level and not within the framework of cultural studies, if they were the subject of the attention of researchers at all. Materials and methods. The article discusses a specific aspect of the study of pottery ceramics, technological. The analysis is based on the historical, cultural and morphological principles of the study. It employed the documents stored in the Scientific Archive of the Research Institute for the Humanities under the Government of the Republic of Mordovia, as well as the ethnographic material of the S. D. Erzia Mordovian Republican Museum of Fine Arts, Mordovian Republican United Museum of Local Lore, Museum of Folk Culture of Mordovia. Results and discussion. An attempt to build a typology of pottery ceramics on the territory of Mordovia traces both the preservation of all-Russian functional, formal-morphological features, names of objects, and the emergence of new regional, local features, which was the result of adaptation and mutual influence of various ethnographic groups of the population. The design of this typology suggests the possibility of introducing additional levels when revealing new samples of clay utensils. Conclusion. In the economy of the ancient Mordovians up to the middle of I thousand AD a large role was played by various crafts. The appearance and development of pottery is inextricably linked with the productive activities of the Mordovians. For many centuries, dishes were made by stucco, and later by an exhaust method. Pottery ceramics played an important role in developing the basis of peasant farming and occupied a special niche in the ethno-economic structure of the peasants.