Anastasia Fedorina

Ganna Zaitseva

P Groots

Nikolai Makarov

Radiocarbon dates substantiate the chronology of type sites and archaeological assemblages, help ascertain the artifact- and pottery-based dating for settlements, and allow making certain general observations on the dynamics of settling the Suzdal Opolye in the Early Iron Age and the Middle Ages. A total of 100 radiocarbon dates have been obtained for 11 archaeological sites in Suzdal Opolye. A new chronological horizon of antiquities has been discovered on the territory in question, dating to the fi rst half and the middle of the 1st millennium AD. Some of the sites in Suzdal Opolye yielded antiquities from the horizon of the 9th – fi rst half of the 10th cc. We can assume that the new settlement network and the new material culture refl ecting the integration of Suzdal Opolye into the system of international trade and Baltic cultural relations began to develop in the second half of the 9th c. at the latest. The large series of radiocarbon dates that fall into the range of 10th–12th cc. confi rm earlier observations that the period in question was one of intensive colonization and settlement of the Opolye. The series of radiocarbon dates which indicate the period from the middle of the 13th to the middle of the 14th cc. confi rms that some of the rural settlements that had been founded in the 10th–12th cc. survived the Mongol invasion and continued to exist in the second half of the 13th c.