Exhibition 'Artifacts VIII/XX'

About exhibition

The first metals mastered by people were gold and copper. However, the real revolution for humanity was the shift to making tools and weapons from iron. In dating the Iron Age, archaeologists distinguish an Early Iron Age, emphasizing that the period from the 1st millennium BCE through the early centuries CE is studied mainly by archaeological methods based on material culture. The exhibition presents objects from the 8th–10th centuries that belong to the Saltovo-Mayatskaya archaeological culture. The exhibits indicate that in the Prioskolye forest-steppe even in the second half of the 1st millennium CE forges were active and that the territory of present-day Belgorod Oblast may have hosted the largest metallurgical center in Eastern Europe for that time. The exhibition was prepared jointly with the Starooskolsky Local History Museum with the participation of writer Andrey Strokov, who as a schoolboy, as part of the local history group 'Alan', took part in excavations at the Yutanovo settlement in the Volokonovsky district of Belgorod Oblast and witnessed the discovery of the first fully preserved bloomery furnace.