Ancient Rus Defensive Building in Works by M. P. Kuchera

Abstract

Mykhailo Petrovych Kuchera, a famous scholar of Kyiv Rus period antiquities, during his whole scientific activity, studied, first of all, fortification traditions of the autochthonous population of the south of Eastern Europe at the end of the 1st and the beginning of the 2nd millennia AD and conducted direct archaeological research at the sites of that period on the territory of modern Ukraine. Above all it concerned the urban centres’ defences, as well as lower social range settlements. One more direction in his scientific activity was the study of so called Zmiiv ramparts, a system of wooden and soil fortifications of the late 1st and the early 2nd millennia BC situated on the lands of the Dnipro River middle regions along 950 km in latitudinal direction and aimed in defending the autochthonous agricultural population in their standing against the warlike nomads of the Black Sea north region