The Hermitage guide

The next stage in the development of culture in this area is reflected in the collections of finds from the Zuyevka and Turbino cemeteries of the Ananyino culture (eighth to third centuries B.C.), Pyany Bor and Gliadenovo type monuments (second to fifth centuries), complexes of the Lomovatovo culture (sixth to ninth centuries), such as various household articles, a large collection of arms, and numerous ornaments. Of particular interest are the openwork plaques of cast bronze executed in the Kama valley animal style and characterized by a combination of various animal, bird and human features in single figures. Many of the motifs of the Kama animal style still occur in the applied art of the peoples inhabiting the Urals. The chronologically latest finds presented in the section are those of the tenth to fourteenth centuries. They come from the fortified settlement of Rodanovo on the right bank of the Kama. The section devoted to the Northwest European Part of the USSR is very extensive both in its chronological range, i.e. from the Neolithic to the first appearance of towns in Old Russia, and in the area encompassed, which stretches from the country’s western frontiers to the Kama valley. Many of the finds belong to the Neolithic cultures of the forest zone. Extensive collections of flint tools have been assembled from finds in the numerous settlements of the Upper Volga Basin, the Valdai Hills lake country and the lands between the Volga and Oka. Among these tools, fashioned by pressure flaking, are polished stone axes, adzes and hammer-hatchets ornamented with figures of bear and elk evidently having some magic significance. The collections also comprise various kinds of pit-comb ware, and numerous articles fashioned of bone, horn and wood, including figures of animals and anthropomorphic idols. In recent years new material from the pile settlements of the Nevel district of the Pskov region has been received.

Rather unusual among the exhibits from the Neolithic Age are great pieces of rock with drawings depicting elk, deer, swans, ducks, dugouts with rowers, and various mysterious symbols, chipped out 4,000 years ago. These images were probably intended for magic rituals. They were brought to the Hermitage in 1935 from the environs of a village called Besov Nos (Cape Devil) on the shores of Lake Onega.

The same section contains collections of finds from the fortified settlements of Finnish and Baltic tribes, which include pottery whose different techniques of ornamentation make it possible to define the areas of habitation of the ancient Finns and Balts. Prominent in these collections are also remains of later cultures of the peoples of Baltic stock (the Raginiansky and Ludza cemeteries) and those of the Finno-Ugrians (the Middle Volga area, Liadino and Novo-Tomnikovo cemeteries). These finds reveal the distinctive ethnic characteristics of the culture developed by the Finno-Ugrian population of the northern areas of Eastern Europe and the Balts inhabiting the Eastern Baltic coast in the latter part of the first millennium and the early second. Among these, the bronze and silver adornments deserve attention. The ceremonial attire of Lettish women, for instance, consisted of a complicated headdress of ribbons with metal tubes and bells, several massive twisted necklaces and moulded bracelets (occasionally as many as nine on each arm), chains and plaques, fibulae and buckles. Finnish women wore various kinds of zoomorphic “tinkling” or “jingling” pendants, mostly in the shape of horses or ducks.

The collections representing the pre-Slavic and Slavic cultures include finds from sites belonging to the Pomor, Zarubintsy and Pshevor cultures (second century B.C.—fourth century A.D.), to early, and definitely Slavic, sixth- and seventh-century settlements along the South Bug and Dniester, as well as to settlements of the Romny-Borshevo culture. All of these sites throw light on the successive stages in the cultural evolution of the precursors of the Slavs and the Eastern Slavs themselves down to their unification in a single state in the ninth century.