Nikolay A. Krenke*, Ivan N. Ershov**

Institute of Archaeology RAS, Moscow, Russia

* E-mail: nkrenke@mail.ru
** E-mail: ershovin@yandex.ru

Keywords: floodplain, buried soils, river’s paleobed, Old Russian temples, monasteries.

New investigations of a small church of the 12th century on the territory of the Boris and Gleb Monastery on the Smyadyn made it possible to refine its location and the degree of preservation of its foundations, as well as to reveal the wooden fence of the monastery. The finds collected in the buried ground beneath the church floor (including stucco ceramics) indicate a long period of economic development of the monastery location since the second half of the 1st millennium AD. The number of finds dated back to the 11th–12th centuries is significant. The study of the floodplain area allowed obtaining data on changes in the position of the Dniepr riverbed. In the rear part of the terrace there was found a location of an oxbow lake, which existed during the construction of the monastery. At that time, the riverbed of the Dnieper was about 100 m to the north of the terrace edge. A site was found in which there was a descent from the terrace to the bank of the river Smyadyn, where the finds of the late 10th – early 11th century were discovered. The study determined the “corridor” within which the Smyadyn riverbed was located. Upstream from its mouth in the deposits of the Dnieper floodplain, ancient buried soils of the Atlantic-Sub-Atlantic period have survived, including the clearly manifested “Gnezdovo” soil, which was the day surface in the second half of the 1st – the early 2nd millennium.

DOI: 10.31857/S086960630001649-2