Staurographic Collection of the Krivoshchyokovo Necropolis (Typology, Semantics)

Abstract

The present research featured a collection of cross pendants, obtained in the process of archeological excavations in the village of Krivoshchyokovo. The village was situated on the left bank of the Ob river on the territory of the modern Novosibirsk. The archeological site included a fragment of the foundation of Nikolskaya church (1881) and a Christian necropolis of 384 graves. The excavations yielded a substantial staurographic collection, as rich as the collections of the Ilimsk fortress, Irkutsk churches, or the city of Omsk. The research objective was to structure the information about the Krivoshchyokovo collection of cross pendants. The collection consists of 270 artifacts dated XVIII – late XIX centuries. The items were classified according to shape, semantics, and epigraphic observations. The classification was based on the typology developed by V. I. Molodin for the collection of Ilimsk fortress. The collection was divided into six types of crosses, typical of similar collections of modern time artifacts found in Western and Eastern Siberia. The Krivoshchyokovo collection appeared to contain some unique items, which have no iconographic analogies but are similar in shape. As a result, the typology introduced by the present article proved wider than the typology it was based on. In addition, the author discovered two new types of cross pendants. The fact that one of them may be related to Catholic cross pendants revealed a certain confessional diversity of the local village population.