Archaeologists accidentally find a burial site of the Old Russian era in Chernihiv (photo)
In Chernihiv, we accidentally stumbled upon ancient burials from the Old Russian era while excavating a water supply trench on Lyubetska Street. This street is one of the oldest in Chernihiv, connecting the city with Liubech.
Archaeologist Ihor Ihnatenko reported the discovery on Facebook. According to him, while excavating a water supply trench, archaeologists came across ancient burials. It is believed that they date back to the times of late paganism.
"The researchers learned that there was a burial ground here in 2019 when they found soil burials of the Old Russian era near the Palace of Chemists. In the following years, the number of excavated ancient graves increased, and the remains of pagan mounds were found. Scientists have long noticed that the mound burial grounds crossed the ancient Chernihiv in a semicircle," the scientist said.
Ihnatenko said that earlier the mounds were located along the roads leading out of the city.
"Now it's hard to say whether the newly found burials were tied to the aforementioned 'grave belt' or to the ancient Lyubetska road. An interesting observation was that the mound burials excavated in this place were quite late. We can say that the people of Chernihiv did not immediately become Christians, at least in the 11th century, and maybe in the early 12th century, some of them buried their dead under mounds," he added.
The archaeologist noted that the funeral rite was a very conservative element of material culture, but scientists have noticed its changes, they occurred during the XI century: "At first, corpse burnings disappeared-Christianity condemned such pagan rites, and in the old days it was believed that a burnt dead person could not be resurrected. Then, under the influence of Christianity, the pagans became less "bloodthirsty" - in under-mound burials, the remains of people and animals especially killed to accompany their owners to the afterlife are no longer found."
For example, he told us about a mound found on the outskirts of Sedniv. It contained the remains of a once-rich man. The remains were found in a "chamber," the so-called "house of the dead." The scholar noted that in the tenth century, nobles were buried in this way in Russia and Scandinavia.
"However, the wealth played a cruel joke on the deceased, and a few decades after the burial, robbers dug a passage to the chamber and robbed it. The archaeologists got only a clay pot and an iron fibula and a few other items that allowed them to date the burial to the middle of the eleventh century. Then the robbers scattered the bones of the deceased, in this position they were "sealed" to the ground by the ceiling of the chamber, which later collapsed. There may have been jewelry in the grave, but what was missing were the skeletons of a wife and a horse, which are usually found in such tombs," the scholar added. According to him, later only mounds remained of the old pagan rite. "There were pagan rituals that accompanied burials in those days, and I think they included enough mystical actions and words. But we know nothing about them," Ihnatenko summarized.
Earlier in Chernihiv, during the reconstruction of the water supply system on Lyubetska Street, an ancient ditch was excavated - the "Suburbs of Ancient Chernihiv".
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