ARCHAEOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS OF BARROW NECROPOLISES OF BILSK HILLFORT IN MUSEUM STORES OF KHARKIV AND KOTELVA

A peculiarity of the barrow necropolises of the Bilsk microregion is their connection with a huge settlement complex that developed over several centuries, from the last quarter — the late 8th to the late 4th century BC. Material from the excavations of the barrows not only supplements the information obtained during the study of various components of the Bilsk hillfort and sites in its vicinity. It also significantly expands our understanding of various aspects of the life of local population and becomes reliable source for the working out of chronology of the sites of Forest-Steppe Scythia. Some artefacts discovered in the barrows of the Bilsk necropolises are unique and can be classified as the objects of national heritage. Most of the finds are kept in the museum stores of Kharkiv and Kotelva. The items, formed the core of collections, are linked with archaeological excavations of various expeditions, starting from the second half of the last century. Meanwhile, each of the institutions had the periods when their stores were replenished most intensively. The store of the Museum of Archaeology of Karazin University keeps material from excavations since 1965 till 1981 amounting to 1137 storage units. Collection of the Historical and Cultural Reserve «Bilsk» began to form after its foundation in 2005. Since 2014, the barrows have been explored by several expeditions which increased the number of artefacts in the reserves’ collection almost fourfold compared to the previous period up to 2,346 storage units. Despite the significant difference in the number of finds kept in each of the institutions, the ratio of the main categories of objects is approximately the same. Both collections include different categories of objects such as dishes, weapons, and jewellery. The rarest group of objects is the mirrors, which indicates some common features of the Bilsk collections and the possibility of predicting their replenishment. A significant number of metal products (38.2 and 67.4 %) in both collections indicates the priority of training of the metal restorers in this area and ensuring of storage conditions. Our monitoring of collections of the two institutions demonstrated their representativeness and even uniqueness, their significance for further scientific development of the issues of Scythian archaeology. Since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, the employees of the two institutions established work with the storage, having evacuated the most valuable and vulnerable part of collections, constantly monitored the state of preservation of artefacts, and kept in touch with restorers. In war the collections of the Bilsk Reserve continue to be replenished.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.