Golden Horde sites research : a regional experiment

Abstract

The article gives the overview of the most massive material description methods from the excavations of the Golden Horde sites, namely ceramics. Various scientific approaches to the study of ceramics, the history of their formation, and also the basic methods for ceramic material study (technical and technological, reference-experimental, typological, petrographic and chemical analyzes of ceramics) are examined consecutively. The authors only touched upon the main points within each of these issues. It was revealed that over many years of archeological science development the approaches to the study of ceramics and the methods of its analysis changed. The views of researchers on the source-research possibilities of this archaeological source remained unchanged either. In all historical cultures, the fragments of ceramic material are the mass finds, this led to the conclusion that ceramics and ceramic craft played a large role in the life of society. A detailed study of special methods for the study of ceramics will make it possible to approach closely to the issue solution concerning the origin and the effect of pottery from adjacent territories on it, and also help to develop a scheme to classify ceramic material for fortifications in which it does not exist. However, now for various reasons, researchers use certain methods of ceramics study more and more rarely, which in its turn leads to an unsystematic nature of the obtained results.