Pages: 31-48 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.55086/sp2453148

The fertile plain of the Izhora plateau was settled at the turn of the A.D. by the people of the culture of stone burial grounds. It developed in the 1—6/7th centuries A.D. On the plateau's northern and western edges, in the Baltic-Ladoga Glint zone, an initial settlement zone was formed near springs and riverheads. In the 8th and 9th centuries, there is a chronological gap in the functioning of the burial grounds, probably due to the change of burial rites. In 10th—11th centuries, the population returned to traditional burial places, but the funerary rite had changed. Instead of stone graves, we find a horizon with cremations in ground burials. It was probably due to the influence of the ancient Russian culture on the local Baltic-Finnish population. In the 10th century, the Votian Land falls into the cultural and political influence of the Novgorod Principality. At the same time, the geography of settling expands to the east. The change of cremation to inhumation occurs in the middle — second half of the 11th century. It is also seen as the influence of already Christianized Rus’. At the turn of the 11th—12th centuries, Slavic settlers brought the barrow rite in the region. The Finnish population of the plateau, Votians and Ests, borrow it in the 12th—13th centuries and mix with Russian settlers. The Finnish population outside the fertile highland was not assimilated, there were conditions for the formation and development of indigenous culture of the Votians and Izhora until the ethnographic time.

Keywords: Viking Age, Middle Ages, Rus’, Novgorod Land, funerary rite, Votians, Slavs

Information about author:

Ivan Stasyuk (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: 0000-0003-2507-2572