Dnepr Hoards

 

There are a group of Early Medieval hoards of metal ornaments (fibulae, appliques, belt fittings etc) in the forest steppe zone of the Middle Dnepr region called the Martynivka type. The British Museum has some of the artefacts from the eponymous site. They are often linked with the Early Slavs, that's a bit dubious, but certainly they do not belong to the 'Antes' which is what many archaeologists - especially the Soviet ones - say they are. But in any case they are a pretty characteristic element of Ukrainian culture. Most of them are old finds (and most of the new stuff disappears onto the antiquities market). One of the best-published finds is the Gaponovo hoard of 411 itemsdiscovered in the village of Gaponovo (Krasnooktabrskoie) in the Ko renevo district of the Kursk region, Russia. The site was excavated and this shows the hoard had been buried in the archaeological deposits of a settlement belonging to the 5th-7th -century Kolochin culture (Gavritukhin I., Oblomsky A. Gaponovo hoard and its historic and culture context . Moscow, 1996). Another recent find was made in 2009, on the territory of the village of Zamostie near the city of Sudzha, Kursk Region. This one contained more than 1500 items and seems to have been a votive deposit in a wetland environment (Rodinkova VE, Saprykina IA, Sycheva SA 2018,КЛАД ИЗ СУДЖИ-ЗАМОСТЬЯ И ПРОБЛЕМА СОЦИОКУЛЬТУРНОЙ ИНТЕРПРЕТАЦИИ ДНЕПРОВСКИХ РАННЕСРЕДНЕВЕКОВЫХ КЛАДОВ I ГРУППЫ РОССИЙСКАЯ АРХЕОЛОГИЯ, 2018, № 2, с. 130–147 ).

The topicality of this is that it is precisely in the area of the finding of these hoards on the NE fringes of the distribution of this body of material that Ukrainian forces are currently advancing into Russia in response to Russia's invasion of Ukrainian territory. If they hold this territory, maybe the Russian capitulation will include a clause on this material being surrendered by Russia so that it can be studied as a whole alongside that in Ukraine. And the British Museum can give back their bits.