Back in Old Rus and the USSR: Archaeology, History and Politics
Journal: The English Historical Review
Year: 2016

Archaeology, medieval history and contemporary politics are hard for any student of Russia’s past to unscramble. This symbiotic relationship is apparent in the treble burden borne by the archaeological study of ‘Rus’, that polycentric polity once encompassing the territories between the Gulf of Finland and the Black Sea steppes. Firstly, the material remains are held to be important because they can compensate for the lack of literary texts datable (in their surviving form) before c .1050, and a