Review of the Monograph: Vikhlyaev V.I., Petersburgsky I.M., Sedyshev O.V. Ancient and Medieval Settlements of the Mordovians. Saransk: Mord. University, 2013. 216 P.

Abstract

The reviewed edition is the first monograph which deals with the settlements of the ancient and medieval Mordva. It describes the results of the excavations of six settlements, three of which have been published before. The authors date those settlements to the period from the middle of the 1st millennium A.D. till the 18th century. However, this chronology is debatable, because no the Mordovian burial grounds in the Moksha and Vad river basins were registered before the second half of the 7th century. And their chronology is well enough studied. By its structure, the monograph is more like a compilation of articles, which publish the data of scientific reports on the expeditions. Except for the preface and conclusion, it has no generalizing chapters. Each chapter is a description of a single settlement, there is no unified style of presenting the material. The graphic design of the drawings and figures has a number of drawbacks. All the settlements described in the book belong to the category of floodplains. They are divided into four categories: camps, small villages, industrial complexes and farmsteads. At these settlements the following were investigated: houses, temporary seasonal dwellings, summer kitchens, cellars, household pits, iron-smelting furnaces, mud-brick platforms for threshing grain. In the monograph the materials of the results of the excavations of a number of unpublished sites are introduced into a scientific discourse, which allow the authors to significantly expand the source base on the early periods of the Mordovian history.