Русское кузнечное ремесло в золотоордынский период и эпоху Московского государства

The range of the problems considered in the monograph includes both ones of purely technological nature and those related to the cultural and historical studies. The former comprise the following: reconstruction of the blacksmith technologies used when producing artefacts; identification of the raw materials used, both their character and quality; characteristic of artisan’s professional skills; revealing of technical and technological specifics of the blacksmith production in relation to the territorial and chronological classification. As for the cultural and chronological problems, we were mainly interested in the problems of continuity or discontinuity in the production traditions with regard to the consequences of the Mongol invasion, as well as in specific features of development of the blacksmith’s craft against the background of the process of formation of the centralised Russian state.

In correspondence to the raised problems this work consists of two interrelated parts. The first one is devoted to the analysis of the Russian blacksmith’s craft in the Golden Horde period. The second one deals with iron production and ironworking in the Muscovite state.

The work has been carried out by the group of metallographic investigations in the Laboratory of natural sciences, the Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences. It is based on the method of archaeometallography, which permits to raise and solve not only technological, but historical problems as well. When performing the metallographic analyses we applied the method of revealing technological schemes characteristic of specific modes of shaping concrete objects produced at a given archaeological site. This method was used and approved on the materials originating from the earlier periods. We use the term “technological scheme” to denote the sequence of blacksmith operations. Special attention is paid to the quality of executing separate operations, correct choice of the temperature regime, character of the raw material used, and so forth. Consequently, a technical and technological characteristic of each analysed object is obtained.

On the second stage of investigation we distributed the technological schemes by two technological groups. The basic indication for the distribution is technology used for shaping the ana-lysed artefact. Group I includes the technological schemes associated with producing objects of solid metal (iron or steel obtained in the course of various processes), and of pile-welded blanks. These technologies are related by their origin to the Early Iron Age. Group II comprises the technological schemes based on welded constructions (technological welding together of iron and steel) that widely spread in the territory of Eastern Europe only in the period of Medieval Rus’.

Having completed processing of the obtained technological data, we pass to their historical analysis as the next level of the investigation. It includes comparative analysis of interrelation between the two discussed technological groups. As a result, we present a reconstruction of production traditions developed in certain craft centres and an assessment of preservation or possible changes in the technological priorities, and discuss various factors that influenced the situation.

We have chosen knives as the principal category in the repertoire of blacksmith’s production to solve the discussed problems. This was determined by high volume of technological information these objects contain. The accumulated analytical data concerning different chronological periods clearly evidence that it is the technology of producing knives that most spectacularly mirrors any transformations in social and economic fields. Of importance is also the fact that knives are really the objects of mass production in the blacksmith’s craft. The rest of the blacksmith’s production is taken into account in relation to the general technological characteristic of one or other site.

The analysed materials are considered within three groups of sites. These are: the towns that functioned as princely seats, like Novgorod, Pskov, Tver’ and Moscow; minor towns (Zvenigorod, Torzhok, Kolomna, Rostislavl Ryazansky, Serensk, the Izborsk fortress); rural dwelling sites Myakinino 1 and 2, Nastas’ino, Gryaznovka, Buchalki. The whole corpus of analytical data comprises 1255 analyses. The analytical data obtained by the authors during the recent five years (2000–2005) are published in the Appendix.

The analysis of correlation of the two technological groups in the Golden Horde period demonstrates that technological group II dominated, judging from the materials originating from such urban centres as Novgorod, Pskov and Tver’. This is related to the continuity of the earlier traditions revealed in the materials from Novgorod and Pskov dating from the 10th— 12thcc. The position occupied by Tver’ looks similar, since the Tver’ blacksmith’s craft developed the traditions typical of Northern Rus’.