This book considers a series of problems related to the history of the blacksmith’s craft in Russia within a wide chronological span — from the time of establishment of the Mongol dominion until the formation of the Russian centralized state. Conditionally speaking, the discussed period may be divided into two stages: the first one marked by the existence of the Golden Horde, that is, from the second part of the 13th to the late 15thcc., and the second one related to the epoch of the Muscovite state (the 16th— 17th cc.). From the historical standpoint the first stage is characterized by the disunity of Russian lands and parallel development of the trends toward their consolidation, struggle for national independence, which led to gradual formation of the united Russian state with Moscow as its centre. The second stage is marked by the maintenance of centralised power, formation of the all-Russian market, when new territories joined up the indigenous Russian lands and Muscovite Russia appeared in the international political scene as a new state.
The blacksmith’s craft may be rightly regarded as a base for the growth of Russia’s economic culture. To a great extent it was this branch of economy that contributed considerably to the rise of the economic and political potential of the Russian state, which in the early 18thc. had resulted in its transformation into an industrially developed power.
The range of the problems considered in the monograph includes both ones of purely technological nature and those related to the cultural and historical studies. The former comprise the following: reconstruction of the blacksmith technologies used when producing artefacts; identification of the raw materials used, both their character and quality; characteristic of artisan’s professional skills; revealing of technical and technological specifics of the blacksmith production in relation to the territorial and chronological classification. As for the cultural and chronological problems, we were mainly interested in the problems of continuity or discontinuity in the production traditions with regard to the consequences of the Mongol invasion, as well as in specific features of development of the blacksmith’s craft against the background of the process of formation of the centralised Russian state.
In correspondence to the raised problems this work consists of two interrelated parts. The first one is devoted to the analysis of the Russian blacksmith’s craft in the Golden Horde period. The second one deals with iron production and ironworking in the Muscovite state.
The work has been carried out by the group of metallographic investigations in the Laboratory of natural sciences, the Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences. It is based on the method of archaeometallography, which permits to raise and solve not only technological, but historical problems as well. When performing the metallographic analyses we applied the method of revealing technological schemes characteristic of specific modes of shaping concrete objects produced at a given archaeological site. This method was used and approved on the materials originating from the earlier periods. We use the term “technological scheme” to denote the sequence of blacksmith operations. Special attention is paid to the quality of executing separate operations, correct choice of the temperature regime, character of the raw material used, and so forth. Consequently, a technical and technological characteristic of each analysed object is obtained.
On the second stage of investigation we distributed the technological schemes by two technological groups. The basic indication for the distribution is technology used for shaping the ana-lysed artefact. Group I includes the technological schemes associated with producing objects of solid metal (iron or steel obtained in the course of various processes), and of pile-welded blanks. These technologies are related by their origin to the Early Iron Age. Group II comprises the technological schemes based on welded constructions (technological welding together of iron and steel) that widely spread in the territory of Eastern Europe only in the period of Medieval Rus’.
Having completed processing of the obtained technological data, we pass to their historical analysis as the next level of the investigation. It includes comparative analysis of interrelation between the two discussed technological groups. As a result, we present a reconstruction of production traditions developed in certain craft centres and an assessment of preservation or possible changes in the technological priorities, and discuss various factors that influenced the situation.
We have chosen knives as the principal category in the repertoire of blacksmith’s production to solve the discussed problems. This was determined by high volume of technological information these objects contain. The accumulated analytical data concerning different chronological periods clearly evidence that it is the technology of producing knives that most spectacularly mirrors any transformations in social and economic fields. Of importance is also the fact that knives are really the objects of mass production in the blacksmith’s craft. The rest of the blacksmith’s production is taken into account in relation to the general technological characteristic of one or other site.
The analysed materials are considered within three groups of sites. These are: the towns that functioned as princely seats, like Novgorod, Pskov, Tver’ and Moscow; minor towns (Zvenigorod, Torzhok, Kolomna, Rostislavl Ryazansky, Serensk, the Izborsk fortress); rural dwelling sites Myakinino 1 and 2, Nastas’ino, Gryaznovka, Buchalki. The whole corpus of analytical data comprises 1255 analyses. The analytical data obtained by the authors during the recent five years (2000–2005) are published in the Appendix.
The analysis of correlation of the two technological groups in the Golden Horde period demonstrates that technological group II dominated, judging from the materials originating from such urban centres as Novgorod, Pskov and Tver’. This is related to the continuity of the earlier traditions revealed in the materials from Novgorod and Pskov dating from the 10th— 12thcc. The position occupied by Tver’ looks similar, since the Tver’ blacksmith’s craft developed the traditions typical of Northern Rus’.
In Moscow picture is different. Despite the city emerged as an outpost of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality, with its blacksmith’s craft following the northern traditions, the Moscow blacksmiths on the early stage (the 12th— 13thcc.) show strongly manifested southern production traditions, clearly expressed by group I. This feature may be explained taking into account the historical evidences concerning the population inflow to Moscow from the southern Russian territories invaded by the Mongols. The production traditions of minor towns (Kolomna, Rostislavl Ryazansky, Torzhok, Serensk, Izborsk) had survived after the Mongol invasion. In connection with the said the situation in Serensk deserves special attention: substantial shifts in the technological priorities of the blacksmith’s craft had taken place there before the town was devastated by the Mongol army, whilst after the town’s revival local craftsmen continued to work in the traditions formed in the early 13thc.
Technological group I prevailed in the Golden Horde period in the materials from the rural sites. This phenomenon is evidently connected with the very nature of the rural blacksmith’s production, which presupposed the work of universal craftsman. In such case no sophisticated technologies could have been applied. On the contrary, the objects produced according to the technological schemes associated with group II were supplied to the rural sites mainly from the urban craft centres.
The published data on the analysed materials (first of all those dating from the 12thand the 13thcc.) show that no discontinuity in production traditions caused by the Mongol invasion can be traced, despite one may have expected such a situation.
Nonetheless, one cannot deny that from the general economic standpoint the Mongol yoke had substantially hampered development of metallurgical production. This can be clearly seen, when comparing our situation with rapid progress in West European ironmaking, with its big bloomery furnaces and introduction of mechanical drive, which made it possible to produce blooms up to 100–150 kg in weight and to start the purposeful production of cast iron as early as the 15thc.
We have undertaken some investigations of development of the blacksmith’s craft in the conditions of the Russian centralised state, drawing up the materials of the 16th— 17thcc. Unfortunately, our data concerning this period are much more limited than those from the earlier time. Still, such outstanding sites as Pskov and Moscow are represented by significant series of metallographic analyses and help to shape an idea on certain trends in development of the blacksmith’s craft in the Muscovite state. As a result of the performed investigation it can be said that this period was marked by domination of solid-steel constructions in blacksmith’s production. This phenomenon is related to some qualitative changes in production of ferrous metal — transition to the deliberate production of uklad-steel (bloomery steel). Introduction of this material opened wide prospects for manufacturing high-quality production with minimal expenses, which met the demands of the newly emerged all-Russian market. Whether the obtained data reflect the general situation in Russia is the point of the forthcoming researches. Anyway, the coeval materials from Vitebsk, Polotsk and Zaslavl in Byelorussia show the spread of similar technological schemes (Gurin 2000: 152–153).
It must be also noted that the tradition of producing objects with welded-on cutting edges survived. In Pskov such artefacts make up around 35 % of the total. The picture observed in the Byelorussian urban centres looks similar (Gurin 2000: 153). Evidently, in the 16th— 17thcc. this group of production was considered expensive, and, possibly, was made to order. It should be pointed out that some objects with welded-on working edges were produced until the mid 19thc. (Завьялов 1990: 154, 1998: 49).
The technical and technological foundations of the ironworking formed by the blacksmith’s craft of Medieval Rus’ in the pre-Mongol time had not lost its significance despite the long period of destruction in the country’s history: its potential functioned until the epoch of Peter the Great, when both production of ferrous metals and ironworking reached the industrial level. As soon as favourable conditions for industrial development had been created, Russia was able to realise its technological potential evidenced by the breakthrough in development of iron metallurgy.
(Translated by L. I. Avilova)