Why archaeologists are conducting excavations at the Rurik settlement, near the Church of the Annunciation of the 12th century - the second oldest stone church in Russia
“All Novgorodians know that Rurik is buried here in a golden coffin, but we haven’t even found a corner from him yet,” - Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, head of the archaeological expedition to the Rurik settlement near Veliky Novgorod Vladimir Sedov.
The real task of scientists, who have been working for the second month in a place where the Russian land has gone, is not to find a golden coffin, but in two years to uncover the foundation of the unique Church of the Annunciation of the 12th century, the second oldest stone church in Russia after St. Sophia Cathedral in the Novgorod Kremlin.
By 2018, the ruins of the Church of the Annunciation will become one of the exhibits of the museum display under the project "Preservation and Use of Cultural Heritage in Russia", which is being implemented with the participation of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Russian Parthenon
The Rurik settlement is a peninsula formed by a canal and the Volkhov River flowing here from Lake Ilmen. According to legend, it was here that the ancient Slovenes invited Rurik to reign. As historians say, it was in the 9th century, so that young archaeologists filling buckets in the excavation with 12th century soil are separated from the historical event by three meters of clay and the same number of centuries, Sedov explains.
“The goal of our expedition is to reveal the architecture of this temple for the first time, I would call it the 'Russian Parthenon'. These walls saw the son of Vladimir Monomakh, Mstislav the Great and his son, Prince Vsevolod of Pskov, to whom the temple is dedicated,”continues the head of the expedition.
Promotional video:
The unusualness of the work lies in the fact that about two centuries after 1103 (the exact date of the creation of the Church of the Annunciation), the ancient Novgorodians saw that the old church began to collapse, so it was decided to build a new temple on its foundation with the same name. According to Sedov, the second building occupied a third of the area of the previous building.
When the conservation of the "medieval replica of the 14th century" is completed, it will be covered with a glass-roofed structure to be shown to tourists. The predecessor of the XII century with the foundations of a round tower, a staircase, a pair of walls and an apse, which already protrude quite well from the bottom of the excavation, according to the project of the restorers, will again be covered with earth, leaving the contours of medieval masonry on the surface.
What is found underground
Under the drizzling rain of Novgorod, a dozen students and researchers use a pick and shovel, brushes and trowels to clear the ancient masonry. From a depth of one and a half meter, student Yulia Reushenova from the Faculty of Art History of one of the Moscow universities explains that she would like to study architecture in the future, so she decided that it would be great if she found out what this architecture was originally made of. When asked what she would like to find unique in this excavation, she answers - herself.
Meanwhile, worker Sergei methodically moves a large sieve-screen, similar to a children's swing, and deftly removes a piece of fresco from the layer of the earth. “See, green. This is probably part of the painting,”he says and puts the one-centimeter find on a wooden tablet. In the morning his "catch" is small - less than a dozen fragments, yesterday it was three times more, he complains. From what was discovered earlier - fragments of ceramic vessels, locks, weights, spurs - a picture of the usual urban culture of the 11th century is formed.
However, the main prey of archaeologists is still pieces of painted plaster that have lain under the foundation for about 900 years. As the head of the department for storage and study of archaeological collections of the Novgorod Museum-Reserve Alexei Andrienko says, most of the frescoes of scientific value this season come from this particular site. “Medieval builders economically laid the wreckage of the one that the expedition is excavating under the foundation of the new church. In addition to rubbish, brick and mortar, it contains a huge number of fragments of wall paintings. On the largest ones, you can see the murals of the faces and clothes of saints or angels, perhaps the scales from the Serpent, which they liked to portray in the story about the victory of St. George,”he explained.
The only Center for the Restoration of Monumental Painting in Russia, located in Veliky Novgorod, has already begun sorting materials from an excavation at the Rurik settlement. As experts clarify, it is too early to talk about whole compositions from the Church of the Annunciation, but the work is proceeding faster than usual, since they managed to develop and apply a new, unique method of working with fragments of frescoes.
Yulia Generozova