Amulets and talismans from the “Egyptian” faience from the territory of Krasnodar region. Sources and historiography

The paper presents the source base of figured forms of the so-called "Egyptian" faience, stored in the archaeological funds of the Krasnodar State Historical and Archaeological Museum-Reserve. Historiographical review, in relation to the findings from the territory of the Krasnodar region, complements it. The author tested the method of cross-comparison of data from academic literature and archival data and materials of scientific reports. This opens up new opportunities for the study of funeral and memorial cults of the indicated region in the 1st century B.C. - 3d century A.D. The core content of the study is related to the comparison of different types of sources used to form the database created on a reference group of shapes from faience. The author aimed to trace the processes of formation of the source base from the stage of excavation to the creation of reporting and accounting documentation and the sub-sequent publication of the extracted materials. The paper summarizes for the first time the materials from the territory of Krasnodar region available for the author. These data provide to determine that some types of amulets could be produced from local raw materials at the manufacturing basis of the cities-policies of the Northern Black Sea region. In some field reports, the problem of incompleteness of the primary source base was identified. In some cases, collections’ inventories of the items do not correspond to the data recorded in the course of their scientific processing. Their comparison with the records of the archive and archaeological museum collections allows the author to eliminate the occurring contradictions. Information about amulets and the conditions for their findings contained in academic publications may add details. However, these articles do not acquire the status of a scientific source.