Just a few days ago, the Crimean Bridge forever connected the two Russian banks. However, the transport passage has become not just a physical umbilical cord between the peninsula and the mainland, this construction site has rightly earned the title of archaeological klondike.
Judge for yourself! For three years, scientists have studied more than fifty hectares in the area of the construction of the bridge across the Kerch Strait and approaches to it. Nobody expected such a number of finds. About a million artifacts were found on the shore and under the water. All of them are of scientific value, and therefore were transferred to the funds of the East Crimean Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve and the Taman Museum Complex. And while this treasure is actively studied by scientists, "Komsomolskaya Pravda" will remind you of the most unique finds!
Terracotta head
The excavations in the Kerch Bay near Cape Ak-Burun have become truly unique.
Photo: Infocenter Crimean Bridge.
Divers raised from the bottom about 60 large fragments of ceramic vessels made in the Mediterranean and Asia Minor in the 5th century BC. e. - III century AD. But most of all, scientists were surprised by the terracotta sculpture in the shape of a man's head - probably a depiction of an ancient Greek deity, made in the form of a bust or statue.
“This find is unique for the Northern Black Sea region, it has not yet been possible to find its analogs,” said Sergei Olkhovsky, head of the underwater team of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. - We believe that the terracotta head was made in Asia Minor in the 5th century BC.
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But in order to find out for sure its functional purpose, origin and dating, leading experts in ancient Greek art were involved in the study of the sculpture, who intend to conduct laboratory studies of the composition of clay.
So far, it is only known that the mass production of terracotta products by the method of imprinting in a matrix was widespread already in the 6th century BC. Usually figurines no more than 40 centimeters high with a wall thickness of up to one centimeter were made this way. This made it possible to carry out high-quality firing of such products. However, the fragment of terracotta found by archaeologists belongs to a much more massive piece.
Fighter "Kittyhawk"
It took considerable forces to lift the fighter - a whole floating crane, involved in the main construction and installation work. On the eve of Victory Day in 2017, a Soviet plane from the times of the Great Patriotic War, the P-40 single-engine fighter known as the Kittyhawk, “took off” from the 9-meter depth of the Kerch Strait from the 9-meter depth of the Kerch Strait. It was discovered at the bottom outside the perimeter of a large construction site 6 km from the Taman coast.
Photo: Infocenter Crimean Bridge.
“The crane lifted the fuselage with wings and a tail section weighing more than 3.5 tons,” said the Crimean Bridge Info Center. - The armament has been preserved - six Browning machine guns of 12.7 mm caliber with ammunition. The instrument panel and the pilot's seat, as well as the engine with markings, were partially preserved.
A single-engine aircraft of American production, put into service with the Soviet troops under the Lend-Lease, lay at the bottom of the Kerch Strait for more than 70 years.
Presumably, this combat vehicle served in the assault regiment of the Air Force of the Black Sea Fleet of the USSR and took part in the Kerch-Eltigen landing operation in 1943 (see "Help" KP ").
“During the next combat sortie, the plane could have been damaged by enemy anti-aircraft artillery,” said Alexander Elkin, the head of the search expedition “Big Landing Force - 2017”. - He lay at the bottom with his nose to the Taman coast. Apparently, the pilot tried to reach the last to reach his base. The plane did not crash into the strait. This can be seen from the body, which has retained its shape. Most likely, the pilot was able to land the car on the water and, possibly, survived.
Search engines are now trying to find out who was behind the steering wheel of the fighter. Crimean specialists are 90% sure that pilot Vladimir Avdeenko was at the helm of the plane, but the information is still being checked. There are plans to put the plane in order and install it on one of the historical sites of the Kerch Peninsula, dedicated to the feat of the Soviet military who fought in the Great Patriotic War. In the meantime, "Kittyhawk" will be kept in the Kerch Fortress.
Bieli Settlement Complex
Large-scale research in the vicinity of Kerch revealed 17 burial mounds and an ancient settlement. Fragments of buildings and structures were found in the cultural layer of the settlement up to two meters deep: foundations, parts of the walls of houses and outbuildings of different historical eras - from ancient times to the end of the 19th century.
Settlement complex Bieli. Photo: Infocenter Crimean Bridge.
- Excavations were carried out at a site of a large archaeological monument. This is the "Complex of Bieli Settlements", it has long been known in scientific circles, - notes the head of archaeological work, candidate of historical sciences Yuri Belik. - But full-scale studies of this object began only in 2017 thanks to the implementation of a project to build a railway approach to the bridge. We found numerous masonry and burial remains. We saw fragments of old houses, hearths, pavement, which, apparently, were being restored, rebuilt. Preserved walls with traces of repairs from different eras.
Hundreds of finds were handed over to scientists for processing and detailed study: Turkish clay smoking pipes of the 17th-18th centuries, vessels, jewelry of the Khazar era, antique ceramics, household items of the Bronze Age, cult accessories: from Christian pectoral crosses of the 19th century to the Khazar lunar amulet. A collection of coins from different countries has been collected, which shows the wide trade relations of the settlement and its high popularity among merchants traveling around the Crimea.
- At the site of the excavation of the settlement, we encountered an unusually developed architecture. Numerous masonries are intertwined and layered one on top of the other. Under the Tatar buildings, characteristic masonry of the Khazar period was opened, made by the so-called herringbone. Three small stone columns and fragments of a stone slab were found in one of the discovered Khazar buildings under a powerful stone blockage, ” said archaeologist Yevgeny Lyutov.
Smoking pipes, flint cannon, skull amulet
Also from the Krasnodar Territory on different parts of the route, not far from the hidden coins, artifacts of the III-II millennia BC and the first centuries of our era were discovered. In cultural layers up to one and a half meters deep, dozens of objects were found, including a flint tool of the Early Bronze Age, antique ceramics and Turkish clay pipes.
On the same site, a Bronze Age burial ground was discovered, as well as a unique cemetery of the New Age. Numerous adornments have been found - earrings, beads, rings, bracelets, dating from the 17th-18th centuries. Among the unusual finds is an amulet made from the skull of a small rodent framed in copper, which served as a talisman.
Silver coins
But this find is still called a real treasure. On the territory of the Krasnodar Territory, where the road now passes, among the areas of ancient settlements and burial grounds, archaeologists have found 15 silver coins with a total weight of more than 300 grams. They were hidden in a ceramic vessel on the outskirts of a 17th – 18th century settlement.
Photo: Infocenter Crimean Bridge.
“It is assumed that this money was minted at the mints of Spain in the middle of the 17th century,” the Crimean Most Info Center notes.
It is not known exactly when and how these coins got to the Taman Peninsula. The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) suggests that this is part of the treasure from a robbed galleon or traces of trade, which was quite active here.
- The find is certainly rare. It was handed over to leading Russian numismatics experts who will study the treasure in more detail and determine more accurately the time of its concealment,”said Emma Zilivinskaya, a leading researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Ceramic field
The Kerch Bay was literally strewn with tens of thousands of artifacts: fragments of ceramic amphorae with brands of manufacturers, black-glazed vessels, jugs, various tableware with signatures of its owners. Moreover, this is both local and imported. Dating - V century BC - VI century AD.
Photo: Infocenter Crimean Bridge.
- For more than two thousand years, the Kerch Bay was the main transshipment base on the trade route from the Mediterranean to the Sea of Azov. During sea transportation, part of the cargo was often broken, and when unloading in the port, damaged amphoras and dishes were simply thrown into the sea. So, at the berths, whole deposits of ceramics of different times gradually formed, - said Sergei Olkhovsky, a researcher at the Institute of Archeology of the RAS. - In the 1960s, extensive dredging works were carried out in the Kerch Bay so that vessels with a large draft could approach the berths of the modern port. Part of the bottom soil with ceramics was moved to shallow water near Cape Ak-Burun (there they found a “ceramic field”).
In order not to damage the finds, the bottom sections were cleared manually.
REFERENCE
The Kerch and Taman Peninsulas are a zone of intense fighting during the Great Patriotic War. And in the period from October 31 to December 11, 1943 in the Kerch Strait, one of the largest landing operations in the history of the Second World War, Kerch-Eltigen, took place, when Soviet troops attempted to recapture the Kerch Peninsula from the Hitlerite army. More than 130 thousand soldiers, over 250 ships and over a thousand aircraft took part in that operation from the Soviet side.
Peliki. Red-figure painting Photo: ANASTASIA MEDYNTSEVA / kp.ru
Before the construction of the Crimean Bridge began, the entire area was cleared of mines. Sappers surveyed more than 600 hectares of land and water area, where construction and installation work was subsequently launched. As a result, more than 700 mortar mines, hand grenades and high-explosive air bombs from the Second World War were discovered and neutralized.
ANASTASIA MEDYNTSEVA
