К.М. Свирин

CRITERIA FOR THE ALLOCATION OF SANCTUARIES IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ASPECT

Authors

К.М. Свирин

Keywords:

paganism, sanctuary, historiography, cult monuments, cult practice, cult buildings, funerary monuments, archeology

Abstract

The article discusses the approaches of researchers to the problem of finding criteria for the identification of pagan religious monuments (sanctuaries). The approaches are considered on the examples of the analysis of archaeological monuments of different periods, both isolated sanctuaries and located on Вестник ТвГУ. Серия «История». 2021. № 4 (60) – 92 – the territory of settlements or burial grounds. There are four criteria for the cult status of objects that have many variants of specific manifestations: the presence of obviously cult elements; the absence of signs of other archaeological sites and objects; the unusual nature of traditional signs characteristic of settlements and burial grounds; obvious similarity with objects reliably identified as cult. Features of topography and landscape and ethnographic analogies are also often used as evidence of the cult status of monuments

CRITERIA FOR THE ALLOCATION OF SANCTUARIES IN ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ASPECT