Belt Sets of the “Redikar Type” in Medieval Cemeteries of the Volga Finns

Belt Sets of the “Redikar Type” in Medieval Cemeteries
of the Volga Finns

DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2019.47.2.060-068

O.V. Zelentsova
Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Dm. Ulyanova 19, Moscow, 117036, Russia

This article describes belt sets decorated by metal plaques with nodular borders, which will be termed Redikar sets after the place where they were first found in a hoard. They are believed to mark the Magyar migration to Pannonia. The article discusses when and how such belts, as well as similar ones, reached the Volga Finns of the Lower Oka. The mapping of parallels suggests that their principal distribution area is the Kama basin and western Urals, i.e. places formerly inhabited by the Ugrians. Stylistically, the decoration of such belts resembles that of Iranian toreutics and of the cast ritual items from the western Urals (Perm) and eastern Urals. Because trade and manufacture centers with jewelers’ workshops associated with silver mines existed in the Kama basin, this might have been the area from which silver belts of the Redikar type were brought to the Volga basin. The chronology of the finds is analyzed in detail, and the conclusion is made that they date to the first half of the 10th century. On the Lower Oka, in the western Urals, and in the Kama basin, Redikar belts are found in burials of military elite members. These were supplied to the Mordvins along the Volga-Kama trade route, spanning territories from the Urals to Scandinavia. Their presence in cemeteries on the Tsna River suggests that the Volga Finns were involved in the formation of early states at the turn of the first and second millennia.

Keywords: Middle Ages, Volga Finns, Ugric tribes, belt sets, cemeteries, Redikar hoard