Розкопки у Батурині 2017

Description

This is the 2018 edition of the annual booklets dedicated to the on-going archaeological and historical research of Baturyn (32 pp. in Ukrainian, 62 colour illustrations). CIUS is the main sponsor of this Canada-Ukraine project.

On the basis of new archaeological findings, the authors have determined that the Kyivan Rus’ settlement on the Baturyn site recovered following the Mongol onslaught of 1239 and its fortress was rebuilt from 1625 as an eastern outpost of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The publication describes the flourishing of the town while it was the capital of the Cossack state, particularly under Hetman Ivan Mazepa, and presents unique information about the total destruction of Baturyn by the Russian troops in 1708 provided by the renowned 19th-century Ukrainian historian Mykola Kostomarov.

The booklet examines the excavated remnants of three masonry buildings commissioned by Mazepa, his Chancellor General Pylyp Orlyk, and Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky, as well as domestic and imported ceramic stove tiles, neck crosses, a signet ring with a rare Byzantine motif, and other 17th-18th-century artefacts found during the 2017 excavations in Baturyn. Using the fragments of terracotta heraldic stove tiles discovered at Orlyk’s residence, the researchers have graphically reconstructed his earliest known coat of arms. The 2017 archaeological investigation attest to the vibrancy of masonry construction, urban crafts, ceramic decorative and heraldic arts of the Ukrainian baroque, as well as the extensive commercial and cultural relations of the hetman capital with Holland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Swedish and Russian empires.