A child’s stash? What villagers used to do with accidental antique finds

Abstract

From the XVIIth to the middle of the ХХth centuries the village of Postanogovo was located on the site of the medieval Rozhdestvensky burial ground where systemic long-term research has been carried out. During construction and economic activities, the villagers used to find objects from destroyed burials in the ground. According to the sources it is known that at the end of the XIX century these things came to the well-known private Teploukhovs collection or were sold to dealers. The fate of the finds in other periods, however, is unknown. During the excavations, a relatively small pit was discovered, laid out on the bottom with pebbles, which contained an accumulation of medieval items, probably originating from one female burial of the middle - second half of the XIth century, mixed with items of the XIXth century. In the middle of the pit there are traces of a peg driven into the ground. Based on the analysis of this object, it was concluded that the pit, most likely, appeared as a result of children's play. The study of pedagogical and psychological literature showed that in the children's subculture, especially in the Soviet period, games of «secrets» (for girls) and hiding places (for boys) were very popular, which some authors compare with the forms of ritual play funerals known in traditional culture. Comparison of the features of the found pit with the descriptions of these games led us to conclusion that the pit could be a boy's cache (treasure) marked with a peg, or a «grave» with a cross on it. The fact that, along with medieval things, obsolete items of the XIXth century fell into the pit, suggests that the object was built in the ХХth century.