Andrei A. Kudriavtsev
Institute of Archaeology RAS, Moscow (a-kudravtsev@yandex.ru)

Key words: hoard, denga, Ryazan tamga, Ivan Fyodorovich, village Zapolje, stamp analysis.

Key words: locks, keys, ancient Rus state, trade-handcraft settlements, burial grounds, burials.

The emerging of locks and keys on the territory of the ancient Rus state may be referred to the turn of the 9th–10th cc., which is connected with the beginning of the active Slavic-Scandinavian contacts and the process of the Normans settling in the row of trade-handcraft settlements situated along the route of the trade way “from the Varangians to the Greeks” (Novgorod fortified settlement, Gniozdovo). Their earliest finds are from the excavations of the Zemlianoi fortified settlement of Staraya Ladoga and the barrows studied in the Southern-Eastern Ladoga Lake Region (Ust-Rybezhno) and Yaroslavl Volga River Region (Timerev burial ground). The finds of the studied items in the settlements are not numerous. Locks and keys were not so widely used in the household of ancient Russian people that period. The beginning of their use on the territory of ancient Rus is a part of the formation process of the ancient Rus material culture and connected with the Northern European impact.