The Territorial and Demographic Development of Medieval Kiev and Other Major Cities of Rus': A Comparative Analysis Based on Recent Archaeological Research

Abstract

state, from the ninth to eleventh centuries, when Kiev exercised political domination over all the lands of Rus' and was its capital. In the subsequent period of the fragmentation of the Kievan state, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Kiev lost its dominance to younger, rapidly developing, local Rus' cities/towns. After intensive expansion during the ninth to eleventh centuries, Kiev entered a period of political, economic, and demographic decline which lasted until the destruction of the city by the Mongols in 1240. These historians attribute the decline of Kiev to the division of Rus' into independent principalities that grew stronger during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to the ever more frequent raids on the Kiev region by nomadic Polovtsian tribes; to the sacking of Kiev in internecine Rus' warfare, most notably in 1169; and to the loss of population brought about by these disasters. They maintain moreover that from the twelfth century Kiev lost its importance as an intermediary in the trade between Byzantium, the Islamic East, and Western Europe, as main trade routes connecting the Orient and Occident shifted from Rus' to the Mediterranean.2