Sel'tso cemetery: the missing late Viking Age necropolis in the vicinities of Suzdal

Current research interest to medieval burial sites of the central part of Suzdal land developed due to their basic significance for the studies of North-Eastern Rus' formation and cultural identity, but also due to the demand for special approaches to the search and investigation of the burial sites in the modern landscapes, in the situation when the kurgans were leveled and visible marks of medieval graves are lost. New phase of research at these sites assumes revision of the traditional forms of field investigations: implementation of GIS-technologies for the integration of the field documentation of the former works into modern digital data sets, wide-scale geophysical prospections, systematic search and recording of medieval artefacts from the disturbed burials, now dispersed over the surface. Non-destructive techniques considerably change general vision of Medieval Rus' burial sites, including their spatial structure. Artefact collections obtained through the surface surveys at the cemeteries become an important part of the general corpus of archaeological data relating to Medieval North-Eastern Rus'. The paper presents the results of recent investigations at the Sel'tso cemetery, which was regarded as completely exhausted after the excavations conducted in mid XIX century.