Bazuband Vambrace Excavated at the Citadel of Mangup

This research addresses the double-leaf vambrace, a unique find for the Crimea. This artefact was discovered within the cultural layer dating from the late-fourteenth and the first quarter of the fifteenth centuries and deposited on the street, located to the west of the octagonal church, in the citadel of Mangup. The mapping of the finds of double-leaf vambraces in Eastern Europe allowed the one to identify three groups of parallels to the artefact in question: the vambraces from Rus’ian settlement assemblages from the mid-thirteenth and fourteenth century; the vambraces from the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century barrows in the Northern Black Sea Area; and the vambraces from the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century burial complexes in the North Caucasus. The analysis of the construction of the vambrace from the citadel of Mangup allows the one to attribute this artefact to the bazuband type, which appeared in Eastern Europe in the end of the first half of the thirteenth century, and distributed in the countries controlled by the Golden Horde or being in close contact with the Genghisid polities throughout the fourteenth century. The vambrace in question appeared in the cultural layer of Mangup possibly in relation to the military disaster of the late-fourteenth century, which was described by hieromonk Matthew.