AIA-4D: Cultural Encounters in the North Pontic Region after Antiquity (Colloquium)

Sponsored by:

AIA Medieval and Post-Medieval Archaeology Interest Group and AIA Eastern European and Eurasian Interest Group

Organizers

Adam Rabinowitz, University of Texas at Austin

Discussants

Renata Holod, University of Pennsylvania

Overview Statement

In antiquity, the movements of different peoples across the steppe repeatedly brought nomadic pastoralists face to face with Greek colonists and Roman military camps along the rivers and coasts of the northern Black Sea, creating a borderland of fluid identities and material exchanges. These exchanges did not cease after the division of the Roman Empire, however: trade and political interactions in the north Pontic region were important for the eastern empire until the fall of Constantinople. Archaeological investigations of postantique sites in southern Ukraine are fundamental for the reconstruction of relationships between the steppe and the Mediterranean world, but they remain unfamiliar to Mediterranean archaeologists. Today, many of these sites are threatened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This panel highlights the archaeological evidence for cultural encounters in this region from the seventh to the 15th centuries C.E., a period when the Byzantine state contended and compromised with a range of steppe cultures, from the Khazars to the Varangians. Through emphasis on the persistence of mobility and exchange, the papers in this panel reveal the region’s deep history and its unique character as a forge of new cultural identities.

Four of the papers in the panel take a diachronic approach to a culture-contact framework for the north Pontic region after antiquity. The first reviews the archaeological evidence for the appearance of a new population in Crimea between the seventh and 10th centuries C.E. and its implications for political dynamics during a murky period of Byzantine history. The second discusses a series of hillforts established by another newly arrived group along the southern Buh River and investigates interactions between this group and the Kyivan Rus’ during the 10th century C.E. The third turns to an unusual cemetery of the 11th century C.E. at Ostriv, south of Kyiv, and associates its burial goods and funeral rituals with western Balts settled in the region in connection with the political activities of the first Kyivan princes. The fourth of these papers returns to Crimea to examine the local production of glazed pottery between the 13th and 15th centuries C.E. in light of trade relations with Constantinople and Mediterranean centers. The final paper in the session brings the discussion into the modern period with an examination of the central role of the story of the baptism of Volodymyr of Kyiv and the archaeological site of Chersonesos in Crimea in the political agenda of the contemporary Russian state.