J. M. Rogers, Recent Archaeological Work on the Golden Horde
Belt-trapping, gold, ulus of Jochi, ca. 1227-mid 1270s. Gashun Usta, Northern Caucasus. Hermitage.
M.G. Kramarovsky, who is in the Oriental Department of the Hermitage Museum
in St. Petersburg, a distinguished archaeologist who has been excavating
in the Crimea for the past two and a half decades, is the world authority
on the arts of the Golden Horde, the vast area of Eurasia, from Moldavia
to Transcaspia, which was ruled by the descendants of Jochi, a son of Jenghis
Khan. Till the exhibition of 2001 in St. Petersburg and Kazan' and its catalogue,
to which he was the principal contributor, this rich material, which makes
lavish use of gold and silver, was virtually unknown in the West, even to
historians specialising in the Mongols. J. M. Rogers' review article is
a survey of Kramovovsky's distinguished contribution and an evaluation of
his material's importance for the art and archaeology of later Islam.
