Students share unique findings from Romashkino Settlement
The materials are being treated at the Laboratory of Archeology and Ethnography of the Yelabuga Institute.
The anthropological research is supervised by Associate Professor Albert Nigamaev.
Romashkino Settlement, located in Tatarstan’s Chistopol District, is a relatively sparsely studied archeological site. Junior Research Associate Malvina Kuptsova says, “We have been digging here since 2013. The settlement is one of those which ceased to exist during the Mongolian invasion of 1236.”
Therefore, the Romashkino Settlement is a very interesting source of pre-Mongolian relics of Volga Bulgaria, a polity which existed here before the invasion.
Kuptsova continues, “In 2013, we started finding near-surface bones. We theorized that locals just didn’t have enough time to properly bury their dead because they fled from the invaders. The bones were about 50 cm under the surface, which is very close, keeping in mind that 800 years have passed.”
All the burials were made according to Muslim norms. There are also traces of violence, such as a skull hit by an arrow and several skeletons damaged by blunt objects.
“We made four digs and found a small village and a ravine. One of the digs near a local pond uncovered a skeleton. It was a young man buried according to Islamic norms. The reason of death is yet to be revealed,” shares the interviewee.
The fourth dig must have been a household because it contained large pits – grain silos.
The students won a grant from the Federal Youth Agency in spring 2023 and are using it to analyze their findings. From the moment of discovery to their final form the materials go through several stages: cleaning, photography, conservation and entry into the collection inventory. At the cleaning stage, objects are examined for fragile parts and mechanical damage. During photography, the appearance of the object, dimensions, trace marks and other features are recorded. The third stage of processing includes covering the objects with a preservative, which preserves them from the external environment and further destruction. At the last stage, the findings are given a collection number, and the items are added to the collections.