Exhibition "Defenders of Shcherbinsky" Automatic translate

On February 4, the Museum of Moscow and the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences open the exhibition "Defenders of Shcherbinsky", which will present artifacts found on the territory of the monument of the Dyakovo archaeological culture saved from complete destruction. The exposition will appear in the space of the exhibition "The History of Moscow for Children and Adults".

Shcherbinsky settlement is an archaeological monument located in Domodedovo near Moscow on the banks of the Pakhra River. There was a small fortified settlement where people lived from the era of the early Iron Age, and the latest finds date back to the 6th-7th centuries AD. The settlement, whose cultural layer reached three meters, was fortified with ramparts and ditches from the south and east.

From 1961 to 1964, archaeological research was carried out on the territory of the settlement, which was led by Moscow archaeologist Alexander Dubynin. According to the results of the excavations, the Shcherbinsky settlement was included in textbooks as a reference monument of the Dyakovo archaeological culture, which has preserved its historical landscape.

In October 2021, construction began on the Shcherbinsky settlement, which was stopped, but a significant part of the cultural layer was still destroyed. Archaeologists have discovered several thousand artifacts that characterize the culture and life of the pre-Slavic population of the Moscow region. Visitors to the exhibition "Defenders of Shcherbinsky" will see women’s jewelry and costume details, arrowheads, a fragment of a sword, clay weights.

One of the unique finds is bronze earrings and pendants. Such decorations were found both on the territory of the Roman Empire and in the cities of the Black Sea region. The population of the Dyakovo culture made analogues from bronze, but in ancient times, earrings polished to a shine looked like gold. Another interesting find is noisy bronze pendants, very rare decorations of the so-called Dark Ages (V-VII centuries AD), when the territory of the Pakhra River basin was inhabited by Finno-Ugric tribes. Such well-preserved women’s jewelry shows a high level of culture of the inhabitants of the settlement. Several items of weapons were also found on the territory of the settlement: two whole spearheads, fragments of bushings and spear blades, tips of two-thorn plate arrows and a three-bladed arrow with a rhombic feather shape.

Visitors to the exhibition will also be able to see a polished thymus bone of a large swan with signs drawn on the surface. Researchers do not have an exact idea of ​​​​the purpose of this artifact. For thousands of years, the swan has been a sacred symbol in the Eurasian space, and many cosmogonic myths of different peoples are associated with waterfowl, which took part in the creation of the world. Most likely, this object was associated with the cult of the swan, which was revered by the Finno-Ugric tribes. Perhaps, in the Shcherbinsky settlement, swans were a desirable spring prey for ancient hunters, since they were the first of the waterfowl to arrive from wintering grounds.

Finding a 12-centimeter bone is a great success, but the gross damage to the cultural layer prevents archaeologists from knowing the exact history of this artifact. Experts in the reconstruction largely rely not only on the objects themselves, but also on their relative position. At the Shcherbinsky settlement, many finds were found outside the archaeological context.

You can see the exhibition "Defenders of Shcherbinsky" with tickets to the permanent exhibition "The History of Moscow for Children and Adults".