Church-administrative Units of the Southwestern Ryazan Frontier: An Attempt at Complex Reconstruction

The primary objective of this paper is to undertake a comprehensive reconstruction of the church and administrative division of the Southwestern frontier of the Principality of Ryazan during the period of Mongol invasion. The research is centred on the upper reaches of the Don River, a historical and geographical region traditionally known as Kulikovo Field. This region was located on the territory in question between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The research methodology is based on the comparative historical method, retrospective analysis, and traditional archaeological methods, including typological, cartographic (e. g., the method of scaled alignment of eighteenth-century maps with the archaeological map of the region from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries), classification, and comparative statistics. To achieve the goal, data from historical sources on the historical and geographical region Kulikovo Field was combined with data received through archaeological works on ancient Russian sites in the upper reaches of the Don River. The authors carry out a comparative analysis of the parish structure of Epiphan Uyezd of Tula Province of the nineteenth century with the plan of identified medieval subsoil burial grounds of the Kulikovo Field of the twelfth-fourteenth centuries. These burials can be interpreted as medieval Christian cemeteries, as most of the excavated burials are typical Christian burials of the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. Each of these necropolises is located near a large cluster of ancient Russian sites. The authors of the article suggest considerng the complex of sites – which includes a subsoil burial ground and a nearby cluster of synchronous settlements – as a postulated centre of administrative and church unit (a parish) of the Ryazan diocese in the period in question. Based on mapping of these centres and comparison of the acquired map with the data from written sources of the later periods, framework and methods for further reconstruction of church, administrative, and territorial structure of the Kulikovo Field in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries have been developed. The established spatial connection between the necropolises of the twelfth-fourteenth centuries with the centres of the parishes of the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries makes it possible to optimise further fieldwork on the identification of new funerary sites of the Old Rus’ epoch.