LOCALIZATION OF THE BELSKY TRANSPORTATION ACCORDING TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH AND REMOTE SENSING
Authors:   Історико-культурний заповідник «Більськ», Коротя Олексій , Осадчий Євген ,   Сумський державний педагогічний університет імені А.С. Макаренка
Published: January 2025

The article is devoted to the localization of one of the crossings of the Vorskla River near the village of Bilsk. The Bilsk crossing is mentioned in written sources only once without its exact location. This is a little-known river crossing, but its functioning is closely related to the history of the region's settlement and the development of transport infrastructure.
The aim of the work is to determine the location of the Bilskyi crossing in the early modern period, to find out the features of its structure and functioning, as well as to analyze archaeological artifacts that may be related to the functioning of the crossing.
To solve this problem, the methods inherent in complex source studies were applied. They combine the analysis of written sources, data from archaeological excavations and surveys, and remote sensing of certain areas. The latest remote sensing devices were used - unmanned aerial vehicles and ground-based LIDAR. These devices made it possible to obtain a detailed view of the area, which is covered with dense forest, as well as to display artificial transformations that arose during the operation of the crossing.
Conclusions. As a result of applying the data obtained, the places where a stop could have taken place before crossing the river were identified. One of the key points of the study is to identify the places where the descent into the floodplain and ascent to the original bank took place. As a starting point for the research, we chose the village of Bilsk as the place name that gave the crossing its name. Subsequently, we analyzed the hydrographic objects - the Vorskla and Rubizhna rivers - and found out their flows in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries based on maps. More attention was paid to determining the location of the crossing on the left bank of the Vorskla River, as the choice of a place to ascend is not as obvious as on the right bank.
To confirm our assumption, we used data from archaeological surveys on the left bank of the Vorskla River, north of Kotelva. According to the research, artifacts of the Cossack period were found in only one place, namely at the settlement “Staryi Karier” in the Zinkivshchyna tract. All of the discovered artifacts date back to the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries and are somehow related to vehicles or items needed for travel. Indirect evidence is the absence of ceramics from this period, which excludes the possibility of a small farm in the early modern period. The analysis of the terrain revealed the remains of a dried-up lake, which could have been a source of water for horses and oxen of travelers, as well as a ramp that could be conveniently climbed up the cape's arrow to the first floodplain terrace on the left bank of the Vorskla.
The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that by comparing the data obtained from various sources, we were able to reconstruct the route that led from the village of Bilsk to the crossing of the Vorskla River and the place where the ascent to the left bank of this river took place.