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The Alan capital *Magas: A preliminary identification of its location

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2022

John Latham-Sprinkle Open the ORCID record for John Latham-Sprinkle [Opens in a new window]
John Latham-Sprinkle*
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University of Ghent, Ghent, Belgium
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Abstract

This article proposes that *Magas, capital city of the North Caucasian Kingdom of Alania, can be identified with the gorodishche (hillfort) of Il'ichevsk, in Krasnodar Krai in the modern Russian Federation. The Kingdom of Alania was the most powerful polity in the North Caucasus in the tenth and eleventh centuries; however, the location of its capital has never been satisfactorily established. This article reviews the evidence of written sources on *Magas – notably Masʿūdī, Juvayni, Rashid al-Din, and the Yuan-Shi – and identifies four criteria which can be used to identify the site of *Magas. These are its occupation between the tenth and thirteenth centuries; the influence of the Alan kings over it; its massive fortifications; and its capture by the Mongols in 1239–40. All of these features can be identified at Il'ichevsk, in contrast to previously proposed sites of *Magas.

Keywords

North CaucasusAlaniaSettlement archaeologyMongol EmpireIslamic geography
Type
Article
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 85 , Issue 1 , February 2022 , pp. 1 - 20
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London

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Footnotes

1

My thanks go to those who helped me refine this article, including but not limited to the two anonymous reviewers; Anzor Darchiev of SOIGSI (Severo-Osetinskii institut gumanitarnikh i sotsial'nikh issledovanii); the members of the Economies, Comparisons, Connections working group at the University of Ghent; Stephen Pow (Central European University), for his help with the Chinese sources and for his reader comments; and to Christopher Bahl (University of Durham), for his help with the Arabic text of al-Masʿūdī. The writing of this article was funded by the University of Ghent BOF Postdoctoral Fellowship.

References

2 Minorsky, Vladimir, “Caucasica III: The Alān capital *Magas and the Mongol campaigns”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 14/2, 1952, 221–38Google Scholar.

3 al-Masʿūdī, Murūj al-Dhahab, tr. in A History of Sharvan and Darband in the 10th–11th Centuries, ed. Vladimir Minorsky (Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1958), 155–60; Letter, Schechter (tr.) in Sources on the Alans: A Critical Compilation, ed. Alemany, Agusti (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 333Google Scholar; Constantine VII Porphyrogennētos, De Administrando Imperio, tr. in Alemany, Sources on the Alans, 173–5.

4 This methodology is based on Cleland, Charles E., “Historical archaeology adrift?”, Historical Archaeology 35/2, 2001, 1–8CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

5 The term gorodishche (plural gorodishcha), usually translated as “hillfort”, is generally used in Russian archaeological literature to designate a fortified ancient site of indeterminate type, as opposed to the more specific use of gorod (city). I have used this term to refer to Il'ichevsk due to our relatively poor knowledge of the site and the extent and type of habitation within it.

6 See Shnirelʹman, V.A., “The politics of a name: between consolidation and separation in the North Caucasus”, Acta Slavica Iaponica 23, 2006, 37–73Google Scholar; Gadzhiev, M.S., Kuznetsov, V.A., and Chechenov, I.M., Istoriia v zerkale paranauki: kritika sovremennoi etnotsentristskoi istoriografii Severnogo Kavkaza (Moscow: Insitut etnologii i antropologii im. N.N. Miklukho-Maklaia, 2006), 149–53Google Scholar.

7 Minorsky, “Caucasica III”, 234. In proposing this identification, Minorsky definitively rejected previous suggestions that *Magas might have been located outside the North Caucasus, most notably V.G. Tizengauzen's identification of *Magas with Moscow. Since Minorsky's article, the identification of the *Magas of the Mongol campaigns with the Alan capital in the North Caucasus mentioned by al-Masʿūdī has been firmly established; for example, Donald Ostrowski's association of *Magas with Kiev has not generally found favour, since this essentially relies on an assumption that a site in the North Caucasus could not be considered significant enough for the prominence it receives in Mongol accounts. See in general A.A. Tuallagov, “Magas-stolitsa Alanii”, in his Alanica: Sbornik izbrannikh statei doktora istoricheskikh nauk A.A. Tuallagova. K 50-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia (Vladikavkaz: SOIGSI, 2017), 534–6; Ostrowski, Donald, “City names of the western steppe at the time of the Mongol invasion”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 61/3, 1998, 465–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tizengauzen, V.G., Sbornik materialov otnosiashikhsia k istorii Zolotoi Ordy. T.II. (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo akademii nauk, 1941), 21Google Scholar.

8 Minorsky, “Caucasica III”, 238. For a map of archaeological sites near Makhchesk, see Alina Akoeff et al., “Poteriannaia Osetia”, http://lostosetia.ru/object/579/ [accessed 18/11/2019].

9 This list excludes several other sites which have been proposed by the following authors as potential sites for *Magas, but without direct evidence being presented. These include the Kachkalykov ridge (M.P. Sevost'ianov) and Gudermes (R. Arsanukaev) in Chechnya; the Kurtatinsky Gorge of the Fiagdon Valley (V. Pfaff) or the region around Vladikavkaz (N.A. Karaulov, Kh.A. Akiev) in North Ossetia; Mokhachla in Kabardino-Balkaria (A. D'Ohsson). See E.I. Narozhnyi, “Lokalizatsiia goroda Magasa ‘prodolzhaet ostavat'sia diskussionnoi, a, vozmozhno, i nikogda okonchatel'no ne reshennoi’”, Apriori. Seriia: gumanitarnye nauki 2016/4, 2016, 1–20; Tuallagov, “Magas”, 534–6.

10 V.B. Vinogradov, “Istoriko-kul'turnoe tolkovanie alkhan-kalinskogo gorodishcha”, in Arkheologiia i kraevedenie: vuzu i shkole (Grozny: Checheno-ingushskii gosudarstvennyi universitet im. L.N. Tolstogo, 1981), 35–6; Shnirelʹman, “Politics of a name”, 49–50.

11 Kodzoev, N.D., Magas: po arkheologicheskim i pismennym istochnikam (Magas: Serdalo, 2003), 6–8, 40–1Google Scholar.

12 R.F. Fidarov, ‘Rol’ Verkhnego Dzulata v gosudarstvennoi ideologii Alanii’, in Istoriko-filologicheskii arkhiv 7, ed. R.S. Bzarov (Vladikavkaz: Institut istorii i arkheologii RSO-A pri SOGU, 2011), 12–14; V.A. Kuznetsov, El'khotovskie vorota v X–XV vekakh (Vladikavkaz: Institut gumanitarnykh i sotsial'nykh issledovanii im. V.I. Abaeva, 2003), 18–24.

13 Narozhnyi, “Lokalizatsiia goroda Magasa”, 15–18; Fomenko, V.A., “K voprosu o lokalizatsii srednevekovogo Magasa”, Istoricheskie, filosofskie, politicheskie i iuridicheskie nauki, kul'torologiia i iskusstvovedenie 11/2, 2014, 170–3Google Scholar, I.M. Chechenov, “Novye materialy i issledovaniia po srednevekovoi arkheologii Tsentral'nogo Kavkaza”, in Arkheologicheskie issledovaniia na novostroikakh Kabardino-Balkarii, ed. V.A. Kuznetsov (Nal'chik: Znak pocheta, 1987), 77–90.

14 Kuznetsov, V.A., Nizhnii Arkhyz v ‘X–XII’ vekakh: k istorii srednevekovykh gorodov Severnogo Kavkaza (Stavropolʹ: Kavkazskaia biblioteka, 1993), 225Google Scholar, 252 and passim; Beletskii, D.V. and Vinogradov, A.Iu., Nizhnii Arkhyz i Senty- drevneishie khramy Rossii. Problemy khristianskogo iskusstva Alanii i Kavkaza (Moscow: Indrik, 2011), 289–300Google Scholar and passim.

15 V.A. Kuznetsov, “Durgulel’ velikii i Nizhnii Arkhyz”, in Metodika issledovaniia i interpretatitsiia arkheologicheskikh materialov Severnogo Kavkaza, ed. V.A. Kuznetsov, A.G. Kuchiev, and V.Kh. Tmenov (Ordzhonikidze: Ir, 1988), 82–89; Irina Arzhantseva, “Kamennye kreposti alan”, Rossiiskaia arkheologiia 2007/2, 2007, 75–88.

16 Yāqūt b. ʿAbdāllah al-Rūmī al-Ḥamawī, Dictionnaire géographique, historique et littéraire de la Perse et des contrées adjacentes, extrait du Mo'djem el-Bouldan de Yaqout, et complété à l'aide de documents arabes et persans pour la plupart inédits, ed. Charles Adrien Casimir Barbier de Meynard (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1861), 51–2; The Secret History of the Mongols, ed. Igor de Rachewiltz (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 164.

17 On the dates of al-Masʿūdī's travels and the Murūj's composition, see ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Masʿūdī, Paul Lunde, and Caroline Stone, The Meadows of Gold: The Abbasids (London: Kegan Paul International, 1989), 12–14.

18 Minorsky, A History of Sharvan and Darband in the 10th–11th Centuries, 156–7.

19 Hudud Al-Alam = The Regions of the World: A Persian Geography of 372 A.H.–982 A.D., ed. Vladimir Minorsky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), 160–1; Minorsky, “Caucasica III”, 233–4.

20 Minorsky, A History of Sharvan and Darband in the 10th–11th Centuries, 156–7; `Aṭā Malik ibn Muḥammad Juvaynī, The History of the World-Conqueror, trans. J.A. Boyle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958), I: 269.

21 On the correction of this geographical error, see Minorsky, “Caucasica III”, 222.

22 Minorsky suggests that this may be an error for 2,700. See “Caucasica III”, 222–3.

23 Juvaynī, I: 268–70. On the importance of the *Magas = fly pun, see Minorsky, “Caucasica III”, 232. The fact that Juvaynī's account builds up to this pun renders unlikely O.B. Bubenok's suggestion that the M.K.S. of Juvaynī is in fact Moscow, since this pun would not work for the Russian city and the same pun was made in the century. See O.B. Bubenok, Alany-Asy v Zolotoi Orde (XIII–XV vv.), (Kiev: Istina, 2004), 49–50.

24 Classical Writings of the Medieval Islamic World: Persian Histories of the Mongol Dynasties, ed. W.M. Thackston (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 232. The specific date given for the siege of *Magas in Rashīd al-Dīn's account is the winter between the Chinese Year of the Pig and Year of the Rat, which corresponds with the winter of 1239–40 and the dates given for the siege by the Yuanshi.

25 Geoffrey Frank Humble, “Biographical rhetorics: narrative and power in Yuanshi biography” (unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017), 1–19.

26 Yuanshi, chapter 122, in R.P. Khrapachevskii, Zolotaiia Orda v istochnikakh (Materialy dlia istorii Zolotoi Ordy ili ulusa Dzhuchi). T.III. Kitaiskie i mongol'skie istochniki (Moscow: Tsentr po izucheniiu voennoi i obshchei istorii, 2009), 172; summarized in Thomas T. Allsen, “Mongols and North Caucasia”, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 7, 1987, 5–40. This duration of three months is corroborated by chapter 2 of the Yuanshi's history, and considered more reliable than Rashīd al-Dīn's dates by Allsen due to its greater specificity.

27 My thanks go to Stephen Pow (Central European University) for his help with the Chinese in this section. See Abramowski, Waltraut, “Die chinesischen Annalen von Ogodei und Guyuk – Übersetzung des 2. Kapitels des Yuan-Shih”, Zentral-Asiatische Studien 10, 1976, 117–67Google Scholar.

28 Yuanshi, chapter 132, in Alemany, Sources, 415.

29 Yuanshi, chapter 128, in Khrapachevskii, R.P., Polovtsy-Kuny v volgo-ural'skom mezhdurech'e (po dannym kitaiskikh istochnikov), (Moscow: Tsivoi, 2013), 47Google Scholar.

30 The question of the date of the Alan kingdom's collapse or decline is highly disputed, with some older sources arguing that it persisted until the Mongol invasions. However, the general consensus in recent publications favours a twelfth-century date for its decline. See for example Kuznetsov, V.A., Ocherki istorii Alanov (Vladikavkaz: Ir, 1992), 319–20Google Scholar; for an overview of this historiography, see Savenko, S.N., Kharateristika sotsial'nogo razvitiia alanskogo obshchestva Severnogo Kavkaza po materialam katakombnykh mogil'nikov X–XII vv. n.e. (Piatigorsk: Piatigorskii kraevedskii muzei, 2017), 45–55Google Scholar.

31 Savenko, Kharateristika sotsial'nogo razvitiia, 109; Narozhnyi, “Lokalizatsiia goroda Magasa”, 11, 15–16; Shnirelʹman, “Politics of a name”, 49–51; Tuallagov, “Magas”, 537. While there is some activity in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries on the site of Alkhan-Kala, this seems ephemeral, consisting of a cemetery and the possible remains of a market.

32 Chechenov, Arkheologicheskie issledovaniia na novostroikakh, 67–75.

33 Arzhantseva, “Kamennye kreposti”, 87. However, Kiafar's dates of occupation do not preclude it from being a residence of the Alan kings in the tenth or eleventh centuries, as Kuznetsov also suggested. See Kuznetsov, “Durgulel’ velikii i Nizhnii Arkhyz”, 86–7.

34 Kuznetsov, Nizhnii Arkhyz v ‘X–XII’ vekakh, 246.

35 Kuznetsov, Nizhnii Arkhyz v ‘X–XII’ vekakh, 246–8.

36 Savenko, Kharateristika sotsial'nogo razvitiia, 178; R.F. Fidarov and D.E. Totaeva, “Materialy raskopok Zmeiskogo katakomnogo mogil'nika v 2001 g.”, in Arkheologicheskoe nasledie: materialy i interpretatsii, ed. R.F. Fidarov (Vladikavkaz: Institut istorii i arkheologii RSO-Alania, 2019), 173.

37 Savenko, Kharateristika sotsial'nogo razvitiia, 61; V.A. Kuznetsov, Verkhnii Dzhulat. K istorii zolotoordynskikh gorodov Severnogo Kavkaza (Nal'chik: Insitut gumanitarnykh issledovanii Kabardino-Balkarskogo nauchnogo tsentra RAN, 2014), 105; cf. Kuznetsov, El'khotovskie vorota v X–XV vekakh, 20.

38 Fidarov and Totaeva, “Materialy raskopok”, 174.

39 Lozhkin, M.N., “Novye pamiatniki srednevekovoi arkhitektury v Krasnodarskom Krae”, Sovetskaia arkheologiia 1973/4, 1973, 270–77Google Scholar.

40 S.K. Filippov, “M.N. Lozhkin i N.V. Anfimov- pervootkryvateli i issledovateli Il'ichevskogo gorodishcha”, in Voprosy istorii Pourup'ia. Vyp. I. Il'ichevskoe gorodishche kak pamiatnik srednevekovoi arkheologii i tserkovnoi arkhitektury. Materialy kraevoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashennoi 50-letiiu otkrytiia i izucheniia Il'ichevskogo gorodishcha (stanitsa Otradnaia, 9–10 avgusta 2012 g.), ed. S.N. Malakhov and S.G. Nemchenko (Armavir: Izdatel’ Shurygin B.E., 2012), 7.

41 M.N. Lozhkin, “Iazycheskie sviatilishcha i khristianskie khramy v Verkhov'iakh Kubani (Krasnodarskii Krai)”, in Tserkovnaia arkheologiia. Materialy pervoi vserossiiskoi konferentsii. Pskov, 20–24 noiabria 1995 goda, ed. S.V. Beletskii (St. Petersburg: Institut istorii material'noi kul'tury Rossiiskoi Akademii nauk, 1995), 69; E.V. Ter, “Sluchainye arkheologicheskie nakhodki v otradnenskom Priurup'e”, in Voprosy istorii Pourup'ia. Vyp. I. Il'ichevskoe gorodishche kak pamiatnik srednevekovoi arkheologii i tserkovnoi arkhitektury. Materialy kraevoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashennoi 50-letiiu otkrytiia i izucheniia Il'ichevskogo gorodishcha (stanitsa Otradnaia, 9–10 avgusta 2012 g.), ed. S.N. Malakhov and S.G. Nemchenko (Armavir: Izdatel’ Shurygin B.E., 2012), 39.

42 L.E. Golubev and G.G. Davydenko, “Problemy sokhraneniia Il'ichevskogo gorodishcha kak pamiatnik arkheologii”, in Otradnenskie istoriko-kraevedcheskie chteniia. Vyp. III: materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashennoi 105-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia kraeveda Mikhaila Nikolaevicha Lozhkina, ed. S.N. Malakhov and S.G. Nemchenko (Armavir: Izdatel’ Shurygin B.E., 2015), 72.

43 Filippov, “M.N. Lozhkin i N.V. Anfimov”, 9; Kuznetsov, V.A., Khristianstvo na Severnom Kavkaze do XV v. (Vladikavkaz: Ir, 2002), 36Google Scholar.

44 Lozhkin, “Novye pamiatniki srednevekovoi arkhitektury v Krasnodarskom Krae”, 271.

45 The only previous attempt to correlate Il'ichevsk gorodishche with a ‘historical’ – or to be more accurate, folkloric – settlement that I am aware of was made by V.A. Kuznetsov. He argued that Il'ichevsk could possibly be identified with the fortress of “Uarp-Fidar” mentioned in the Nart Sagas, a cycle of heroic epics recorded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and common to the various peoples of the north-west and central north Caucasus. However, this identification seems relatively unlikely. For a start, the attempt to correlate a mythical place name – specifically, the home of the Ossetian divinity Wastyrji (St George) – recorded in the nineteenth century with a tenth–thirteenth century archaeological site, based only on its correspondence with the name of the nearby River Urup, seems overly speculative. Moreover, as I have previously argued, the formation of the Nart Sagas cannot be seen as a process of “preserving” older material, but more as a dynamic re-utilization of pre-existing cultural strands. In this context, any attempt to correlate mythical place names with real locations would have to demonstrate why exactly a real medieval place name had been re-utilized in a mythological narrative. Finally, there is no reason to suppose that, even if the name “Uarp-Fidar” did refer to the site of Il'ichevsk, this could not be an alternative or later name for the site, in addition to it being known in the medieval period as *Magas. As a point of comparison, while the original name of the nearby tenth–twelfth century city of Nizhny Arkhyz is unknown, at least three other names (Madzhar-Ounne (brick houses), Elligkhneiaunne (Greek houses), and Eski-Shekhir (Old City)) were used to refer to it in the nineteenth century by the region's Adyghe and Karachai inhabitants. See V.A. Kuznetsov, Alano-osetinskie etiudy (Vladikavkaz: Severo-Osetinskii institut gumanitarnykh issledovanii, 1993), 57; Kuznetsov, Khristianstvo na Severnom Kavkaze do XV v., 57–65; Latham, John, “Sun-Gods and Soviets: Historicising a North Caucasian nart saga”, Iran & the Caucasus 20/2, 2016, 159–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Beletskii and Vinogradov, Nizhnii Arkhyz i Senty, 284.

47 The date of Churches No. 1 and No. 3 is disputed. In the case of the former, Lozhkin favoured a twelfth-century date due to the presence of a carved chancel barrier of apparent Abkhaz provenance, although V.A. Kuznetsov recently redated this item to the tenth–eleventh centuries on the basis of surviving examples in Abkhazia. Similarly, Lozhkin favoured a late twelfth–early thirteenth-century date for Church No. 3, whereas Kuznetsov more convincingly argued for a considerably earlier date, perhaps the early tenth century, on the basis of architectural analogies in Asia Minor and the Crimea. See M.N. Lozhkin, “Alany na Urupe (arkehologicheskii ocherk)”, in Voprosy arkheologii i etnografii Severnoi Osetii, ed. V.A. Kuznetsov, A.G. Kuchiev, and Vitalii Kharitonovich Tmenov (Ordzhinikidze: Severo-osetinskii nauchno-issledovatel'skii institut istorii, filologii i ekonomiki pri sovete ministrov severo-osetinskoi ASSR, 1984), 58; V.A. Kuznetsov, “M.N. Lozhkin i interpretatsiia tserkvi No 1 Il'ichevskogo gorodishcha”, in Voprosy istorii Pourup'ia. Vyp. I. Il'ichevskoe gorodishche kak pamiatnik srednevekovoi arkheologii i tserkovnoi arkhitektury. Materialy kraevoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashennoi 50-letiiu otkrytiia i izucheniia Il'ichevskogo gorodishcha (stanitsa Otradnaia, 9–10 avgusta 2012 g.), ed. S.N. Malakhov and S.G. Nemchenko (Armavir: Izdatel’ Shurygin B.E., 2012); Kuznetsov, Khristianstvo na Severnom Kavkaze do XV v., 36.

48 Kaminskii, V.N. and Kaminskaia, I.V., “Novye issledovaniia khristianskikh khramov malykh form v zapadnoi Alanii”, Istoriko-arkheologicheskii al'manakh 2, 1996, 172–81Google Scholar.

49 Kaminskii and Kaminskaia, “Novye issledovaniia”, 176–8.

50 Kuznetsov, Khristianstvo na Severnom Kavkaze do XV v., 35.

51 Kuznetsov, Khristianstvo na Severnom Kavkaze do XV v., 36–8; Beletskii and Vinogradov, Nizhnii Arkhyz i Senty, 284–5.

52 For example, see Beletskii and Vinogradov, Nizhnii Arkhyz i Senty, 19–25; Kuznetsov, V.A. and Lebedynsky, Iaroslav, Les Alains: cavaliers des Steppes, seigneurs du Caucase (Paris: Errance, 1997), 183Google Scholar.

53 Lozhkin, “Novye pamiatniki srednevekovoi arkhitektury v Krasnodarskom Krae”, 276; Lozhkin, “Iazycheskie sviatilishcha i khristianskie khramy v Verkhov'iakh Kubani (Krasnodarskii Krai)”, 68.

54 Kaminskii and Kaminskaia, “Novye issledovaniia”, 172. For the stratigraphic evidence for the church's destruction, see below.

55 Beletskii and Vinogradov, Nizhnii Arkhyz i Senty, 37; Kaminskii and Kaminskaia, “Novye issledovaniia”, 174–5.

56 Beletskii and Vinogradov, Nizhnii Arkhyz i Senty, 245.

57 Beletskii and Vinogradov, Nizhnii Arkhyz i Senty, 37.

58 Beletskii and Vinogradov, Nizhnii Arkhyz i Senty, 241.

59 On differences in burial custom between Western and Eastern Alania, see Mamiev, M.E., Alanskoe pravoslavie: istoriia i traditsiia (Moscow: SEM, 2014), 97–140Google Scholar.

60 Kuznetsov, El'khotovskie vorota v X–XV vekakh, 71–85.

61 Kartlis Tskhovreba: A History of Georgia, ed. Roin Met'reveli and Stephen Jones (Tbilisi: Artanuji Publishing, 2014), 161–2. This event most likely took place around 1066 since it apparently occurred relatively soon after the joint Alan–Georgian raid on Ganja in 1065, but prior to the Seljuk invasions of Georgia.

62 Lozhkin, “Novye pamiatniki srednevekovoi arkhitektury v Krasnodarskom Krae”, 270.

63 Lozhkin, “Novye pamiatniki srednevekovoi arkhitektury v Krasnodarskom Krae”, 270; O.N. Evseeva, “Il'ichevskoe gorodishche – pamiatnik istorii i kul'tury federal'nogo znacheniia”, in Voprosy istorii Pourup'ia. Vyp. I. Il'ichevskoe gorodishche kak pamiatnik srednevekovoi arkheologii i tserkovnoi arkhitektury. Materialy kraevoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashennoi 50-letiiu otkrytiia i izucheniia Il'ichevskogo gorodishcha (stanitsa Otradnaia, 9–10 avgusta 2012 g.), ed. S.N. Malakhov and S.G. Nemchenko (Armavir: Izdatel’ Shurygin B.E., 2012), 25.

64 V.N. Kaminskii and I.V. Tsokur (Kaminskaia), “O fortifikatsii u alan Severnogo Kavkaza”, in Materialy i issledovaniia po arkheologii Kubani vyp. 1, ed. I.I. Marchenko (Krasnodar: Kraibiblkollektor, 2001), 171.

65 Kaminskii and Tsokur (Kaminskaia), “O fortifikatsii u alan”, 171–2; Beletskii and Vinogradov, Nizhnii Arkhyz i Senty, 156, 189–90.

66 Rudolf Cesaretti and others, “Population–Area relationship for medieval European cities”, PlosOne 11.10, 2016, <https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0162678>.

67 See UNESCO, “Archaeological Site of Ani”, https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1518/ [accessed 18/11/2019].

68 Kuznetsov, Nizhnii Arkhyz v ‘X–XII’ vekakh, 13–14.

69 See Figure 3.

70 Kaminskii and Kaminskaia, “Novye issledovaniia”, 172; Filippov, “M.N. Lozhkin i N.V. Anfimov”, 9.

71 As far as I am aware, no osteological analysis was performed on the skeleton, and the sex of the child is therefore unclear.

72 Notably, sites on the Great Hungarian Plain apparently destroyed by Mongol attacks similarly feature unburied bodies and destruction to buildings that was not repaired. See Laszlovszky, Jozsef, Pow, Stephen, Romhanyi, Beatrix F., Ferenczi, Laszlo, and Pinke, Zsolt, “Contextualising the Mongol invasion of Hungary in 1241–2”, Hungarian Historical Review 7/3, 2018, 419–50Google Scholar.

73 On “chains of inferences” in associating archaeological evidence with events, see Ewan Campbell, “The archaeological evidence for external contacts: imports, trade and the economy in Celtic Britain AD 400–800”, in K.R. Dark (ed.), External Contacts and the Economy of Late Roman and Post-Roman Britain (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1996), 83. For general problems with accounts of destruction resulting from Mongol conquests, see Paul D. Buell, “Central Eurasia: Genocide as a way of life?”, unpublished paper, https://www.academia.edu/241538/Central_Eurasia_Genocide_as_a_way_of_life [accessed 10/04/2020], 7–9.

74 Golubev and Davydenko, “Problemy sokhraneniia Il'ichevskogo gorodishcha”, 72.

75 Sabine Reinhold, A.V. Belinskii, and D.S. Korobov, “Remote sensing data for survey [sic] in a high altitude mountain environment”, Quaternary International 402, 2016, 46–60.

76 See Savenko, Kharateristika sotsial'nogo razvitiia, 199.