Iron Jew’s Harps of the Golden Horde Period in the Volga Region

All of the jew’s harps of the Golden Horde Volga region that we have accounted for have a body of the shape, that G. Kollthwaite, the leading expert on European jew’s harps, described as «hairpin-shaped». The finds in the Volga region probably belong to the Kuusisto type, identified by G. Kollthwaite, although we do not always have their complete characteristics for confident typologization. They are dated by the limits of the 2nd half of the XIII – XIV century (in one case, the XIV–XV centuries), and in two cases there is a narrow date – the second third of the XIV century. By now it is already clear that all the earliest finds of jew’s harps originate from Asia, where they date back to the last centuries of the I millennium AD, and that it is «hairpin-shaped» instruments, that are the oldest form of jew’s harps there, continues to exist in the II millennium AD.