THE ISSUES OF MEDIEVAL RITUAL OAKS IN THE MIDDLE AND UPPER DNIEPER BASIN
Authors: Zabashta R. 
Published: October 2024

In 2023 the abstracts of N. Khamayko, O. Pashkovsky, P. Goldin, M. Kubliya, and E. Yanish «Scientific studies of the cult “Oak of the Slavs» were published. The publication is focused on three pagan ritual oaks that were discovered in the Dnieper and Desna interfluve in 1909, 1975 and 1978/1979. The mandibles of pigs were embedded into these trees. The last two oaks, according to 14C indicators, are dated within the third quarter / late 7th — late 10th / mid-11th centuries. The main part of the mentioned publication is the results of laboratory archaeozoological research of animal remains from an oak trunk raised from the bottom of the Dnipro in 1975 conducted by employees of the Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 2020 and 2023. The researches have shown that the bones belong mainly to domestic or hybrid (semi-domestic/semi-wild) sows; the age of most animals is up to 3 years or more; the time of death of three animals falls on the second half of the annual cycle, and in two cases the period of death is determined by the winter season. According to most laboratory indicators, the bone remains of animals from the oak of 1975 were similar or identical to the corresponding indicators of the pig mandibles from the oaks of 1978/1979 maintained by the Institute of Zoology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 1987. This proves the similarity between the analyzed specimens not only at the level of the main zoological and biological components. One can see the similarity or identity at the level of the content of the pagan ritual, during which the jaws of sows were inserted into tree trunks. The main indicators of archaeozoological and dendrological (regarding the oak in 1978/1979) research, as well as historical and ethnographic research, convince that the mentioned ritual trees are the realities of the calendar rituals of the autumn and winter seasons (in particular, perhaps, the rituals of productive magic) of local agrarians, and not the rituals of traveling merchants-wives, as was considered until recently.
In the mentioned publication, the authors also touched upon the question of the ethnocultural attribution of the analyzed ritual oaks. Having based on a number of facts mainly of a general historical nature, in particular: 1) the appearance of the Vikings on the lands of the Lower Desna — the Middle Dnieper in the period of early Rus’; 2) the spread of the cult of trees and animals among pagan Scandinavians; 3) calibrated dating range of ritual oaks in 1975 and 1978/1979 within 776—938 years, i.e. largely within the Early Rus area; 4) change in the 10th century Slavic archaeological cultures of the Middle Dnieper region to the archaeological culture of Old Rus, they put in doubt (although not directly) the probable belonging of these trees to the local Slavs. However, this attempt lacks concrete and therefore convincing evidence of a historical, archaeological or historical-ethnographic nature. There is no reason to assume a significant influence of the Scandinavian newcomers on the spiritual sphere of the autochthons, especially on their calendar rituals of the agricultural cycle.