Students from five countries will study the maritime trade of medieval Crimea

The main goal is to teach our young, one might already say, colleagues scientific work: working with sources, working with [археологическим] material, teamwork, analyzing information, applying data, making scientific conclusions. This year [в проекте] Representatives from three continents — Europe, Asia and Africa — from five countries are participating. [В «Кругосветке» принимают участие студенты] from universities in Rostov-on-Don, Pskov, Veliky Novgorod, as well as from abroad: from Armenia, Lebanon, Nigeria, Kazakhstan. During the expedition, they will get acquainted with unique monuments, with scientific works that were carried out here earlier, and will be able to master at least basic skills in working with the equipment that SevSU has and that was provided by the Russian Academy of Sciences, for surveying the seabed and searching for objects on it.

Lebedinsky explained that the students who were selected to participate in the expedition based on the results of the competition will work in two teams from August 12 to 18. Their scientific task is to obtain new information about the sea trade routes in the Northern Black Sea region of the 5th-15th centuries AD. One scientific group will travel by land along the coastline from Sevastopol to Tuapse, paying attention to several important historical sites on the shore. The second part of the team will work in the waters near Sevastopol, where several important harbors were located during the specified period, which have not been sufficiently studied at the moment.

The scientist noted that the expedition participants will try to reconstruct how the coastline ran in certain areas during the period under study, try to localize some port facilities and model what some of them might have looked like, and also monitor shipwrecks in several areas of the shelf.

The data obtained will be summarized and introduced into scientific circulation. Then all this will form the basis of a large collection, which will be published, and a large documentary film will be shot, which we will try to distribute in different regions of the country, among different audiences — first of all, of course, among students. For our part, we provide the material side of the expedition. Including the marine part [участники «Крымской кругосветки»] will go out to sea and will be able to get acquainted with the research vessel «Pioneer-M»— added in turn the rector of SevSU Vladimir Nechaev.

The Crimean Peninsula and the territory of today’s Krasnodar Region were colonized by the ancient Greeks about 2,500 years ago, when a number of city-states were founded there. They later came under the control of the Roman Empire. After its collapse, that is, at the beginning of the period that we now call the Middle Ages, a significant part of this region became the periphery of the Byzantine state, while part of it was subordinated to other states, such as the Khazar Khaganate or Rus’. In the Middle Ages, Genoese merchants founded their settlements on the Crimean Peninsula, and in the 15th century, its territory came under the control of the Crimean Khanate.

source: TASS