Archaeologists at the resort

One of the most famous archaeological research in our country has been conducting many decades in Veliky Novgorod. Local conditions allow organic matter, and therefore it is here that they regularly make finds that are almost impossible for excavations, say, in Smolensk or in Moscow. For example, world -famous birch bark letters. However, not far from Novgorod there is a district center of Staraya Russa, also a very ancient city with very rich archeology and almost the same archaeological conditions. Alas, they know much less about him and excavations in him. At the request of the TRV-HOW, this gap is filled in by Pavel Kolosnitsyn , one of the participants in the work on the resort excavation of Old Russa, one of the largest in the city.

The resort excavation was laid in July 2012 at the site of the designed corps of the Old Russa resort. The main goal of excavations is to study cultural strata, which is threatened by destruction during future construction, and thus maintain information about the past and save cultural and historical values. According to Russian law, the developer is obliged to finance such work. Naturally, construction organizations and customers of work, as a rule, do not want to go to additional costs and in every possible way try to avoid archaeological excavations. But after long and difficult negotiations, it was possible to defend the need for rescue work. As a result, the results surpassed all expectations.

Judging by the finds of individual flint guns and flaws, sources of salt water attracted people in the era of Neolithic and early metal.
During the Middle Ages there was the outskirts of the city and passed the road leading to the lake. Seliger. The first traces of economic development, probably associated with the processing of fields located here, and the functioning of the road, dates back to the XII-XIII centuries.

Manor development in this area appears no earlier than the middle of the XIV century.

The borders of the resort-I excuse included fragments of several estates of the XIV-XV centuries, separated by picket fence. At the same time, in the Old Russian layer the remains of several log cabins and wooden stages were opened and investigated. Judging by the collection of finds, the owners of the estates had access to important official documents and had a rather high property and social status. The development lasted relatively long, and, probably, already in the middle - the second half of the 15th century, the entire complex of structures died in a large fire. After that, the plot for a long time comes to desolation and partially diverted under the fields and gardens. The exception is only the territory located in the southern part of the excavation, where a set of things of the late XVI - early XVII centuries has been identified.

At the beginning of the 19th century, part of this territory remained in the possession of private individuals, and the other went to the created resort. By this time, the cobblestone bridge found in the eastern part of the excavation, along the roadsides of which trees were planted. She led to the battleship No. 1 to the West Board of the Middle Lake (built at the end of the 19th century, destroyed during the Great Patriotic War).

At the moment, more than 2600 individual finds have been discovered on the resort excavation. A significant part of the finds are fragments and details of cores (iron bastards for salt wiping). Among the finds are of particular interest are the bone applied seal “Posadnich of the Son” (XV century), the underwear of the Cross of the Eclopion (XIV century), a set of jewelry and a collection of hanging lead seals of the late XIV-early XV centuries.

Information about these and other findings of the old Russian archaeological expedition of the Novgorod State University named after Yaroslav the Wise is open for free access within the framework of the Internet project “Antiquities of Novgorod Earth: electronic database of archaeological finds” ( www.novsu.ru/archeology ).

Currently, work on the excavation continues about their course, new discoveries can be found on the blog http://starcheolog.livejournal.com , which is conducting one of the members of the expedition.