Model for producing belt-mounts of oriental appearance from the rokot hillfort in Smolensk region

V.S. Nefedov and V.V. Murasheva consider an unusual find recovered from the territory of destroyed kurgan cemetery near the Rokot village, Smolensk region. The cemetery entered a cluster of archaeological sites of the late 9th - 10th cc. that also included a hillfort, one of the largest ones in the Dnieper and Dvina interfluve. Varied and spectacular finds evidence the multiethnic and socially stratified character of the population that inhabited the hillfort (including people of the Scandinavian origins) and controlled one of the most important portages on the route from the Varangians to the Greeks. The artefact published by the authors is interpreted as a defect matrix for producing slotted quadrangular belt-mounts, or as a defect casting of such a mount. The known sets of belt-fittings are of the Turkic origin; these were rather widely spread in Central Asia and Eastern Europe from the late 7th to the 11th cc. In accordance with the suggested interpretation the authors suppose that in the territory of the Smolensk region between the Dnieper and Dvina in the 10th c. some people wore belts of the discussed type (which is confirmed by the Gnezdovo finds), and even tried to produce, or repair them.