Pages: 249-258 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.55086/sp245249258

The appearance of the Mohe culture in the Far East, the foremother of the Tunguso-Manchurian ethnic groups, is associated with the Great Migration period. Its carriers, being pushed out of Asia, spread over a vast territory — the Amur Region, Primorye, Sakhalin Island, Northeast China (Dongbei), the north of the Korean Peninsula, and the Hokkaido Island of Japan. The culture dates to the I millennium AD. In Primorye, extensive stationary excavations were carried out at the Monastyrka-3 necropolis. The site is located in the Dalnegorsky district of Primorsky Krai in the basin of the Rudnaya River. The article offers an analysis of burial No. 29, which allows, by its planographic structure, a unique find — a gilded bell with the inscription “Chief of the Shuidaocheng Fortress”, radiocarbon dates, correlation of the artifacts with the finds from the neighbouring single-cultural sites (settlement, hillfort, fortress, “archer’s loopholes”), to finally date the burial (666—779), to determine the administrative status of the buried one as the head of the fortress, find out the name of the fortress — Shuidaocheng. The fortress is related to the Vaskovskoye hillfort, which guarded the entrance to the mouth of the Rudnaya River from the Sea of Japan.

Keywords: Primorye, Mohe, culture, dating, the burial, ground, Monastyrka-3, Shuidaocheng Fortress

Information about author:

Olga Dyakova (Vladivostok, Russian Federation). Doctor of Historical Sciences. Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of Peoples of the Far East, Far-Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Pushkinskaya St., 89, Vladivistok, 690001, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-3743-8220