A collection of pendants with loops from the Vak-Kur burial ground

The subject of the study was a collection of metal head ornaments from the Vak-Kur burial ground, consisting of metal earrings and pendants with loops at the bottom. The Vak-Kur burial ground is a key monument of the Yudinskaya archaeological culture, dating back to the 10th–11th centuries. The aim of the study is to comprehensively examine this group of ornaments (7 specimens). Based on the purpose of the study, the following tasks were put forward: morphological description of the jewelry, description of the manufacturing technology, review of publications to find analogies and create a typology of the jewelry discussed in the article. The relevance of the work is determined by the relatively small number of pendants with loops introduced into scientific circulation to date (only 47 specimens), the unresolved issues of the place and time of their production, and the period of their existence. To solve the set tasks, research methods traditional for historical science are used: typological, comparative-historical, descriptive method of analysis of material sources, and the method of analogies. For the first time, a classification of the entire array of pendants with loops from the territory of Eurasia, known from publications (53 specimens), has been made. According to their shape, the decorations were divided into two large groups: 1 – triangular (16 pieces); 2 – fan-shaped (37 pieces). It has been established that two- and three-lobed triangular pendants were widespread in the Urals, while fan-shaped three- and four-lobed ornaments were common in the north of Eastern Europe and Western Siberia. Copper and bronze items, including those from the Vak-Kur burial site, could have been created by craftsmen on site, while silver pendants with loops were mass-produced in the Permian Urals in the 10th–11th centuries for export, primarily to Western Siberia.