Medieval Phanagoria: new discoveries

The medieval history and archaeology of Phanagoria have been studied extremely insufficiently because of the scarcity of written sources and the limited scale of works at the medieval layers of the city-site and necropolis. In recent years the Phanagorian expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the Phanagoria Museum has been making great efforts to change this situation. Archaeological research has begun on a large area of 2,000 m² on the lower plateau of the settlement (the Lower Town excavation site), which makes it possible to study the layers from fifth to ninth centuries. Their thickness reaches four meters. By now, important results have been obtained, which allow us to divide the medieval history of Phanagoria into two major periods: the Byzantine (fifth to mid-sixth centuries) and the Khazar (from the last third of the seventh to late ninth century). The main criterion for such a division is the catastrophe that the city survived between 545 and 554. Its mention by Procopius of Caesarea (De Bello Goth. VIII. 5) is confirmed by the archaeological and numismatic data. In particular, the oldest synagogue in Russia, which had existed for half a thousand years before, perished in this fire. As a result of the total destruction, the city ceased to exist for more than a hundred years and resumed only in the last third of the seventh century. Since that time, the influence of the Khazar Khaganate noticeably increased in Phanagoria, which was reflected in the material culture, including the use of new construction technique – opus spicatum. Phanagoria perished as a result of an enemy attack around the turn of the ninth and tenth centuries.