Pages: 117-152 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.55086/sp245117152

A complex of workshop buildings from the ninth century was investigated in the southern part of the Zemlyanoe hillfort in Staraya Ladoga. The workshop produced jewelry made of a fusible metal alloy that imitated silver. A total of 209 pendants, plaques, molds for their manufacture, spatters, and metal ingots were discovered. The tradition of jewelry production similar to that found in Ladoga dates back to the early Slavic antiquities of the Lower Danube and Dniester region in the sixth and seventh centuries. Additionally, the workshop produced embossed jewelry using lightly fused casting. Unfortunately, the excavations did not include the necessary methodological work to establish the stratigraphic ordering of the exposed structures and finds. For this reason, the studied objects were incorrectly dated, introducing contradictions into the site’s internal chronology and complicating their use for external dating of analogs. The article presents the results of the work to divide the complex’s buildings into separate structures. A comparison of the assemblage with previously known finds led to the conclusion that the workshop had existed at least 30 years earlier. To substantiate the need to correct the previously published dates, the author uses the finds with Slavic analogs and other jewelry workshop products.

Keywords: Staraya Ladoga, Zemlyanoye hillfort, settlement, Slavs, workshop, jewelry production

Information about author:

Natalja Grigoreva (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences . Dvortsovaya Emb., 18, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-1033-6259