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Stasyuk I. The Origin and The Early History of Vad’d’a People: Old Discussions and New Finds

I. Stasyuk
Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences
St. Petersburg, Russian Federation
Center of the Paleoethnological Researches
Moscow, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0003-2507-2572
E-mail: norroendrengr@mail.ru

 

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ABSTRACT. The article discusses controversial issues of the genesis of Vadja, the indigenous people in northwest Russia. It analyzes the Russian, Soviet, Estonian, and Finnish historiographies on the origins and settlement of the Vadja in the Iron Age and the Middle Ages. Archaeological sites of the 13th–18th centuries, such as Valgovitsy, Velikino, and Verdia in the lower Luga were confirmed as undoubtedly Votic burial grounds. The population who left them are direct ancestors of the ethnographic Votians of the 18th–19th centuries. Before the 13th century and the formation of this antiquity horizon, the burial grounds with cremations and inhumations of Zalakhtovye — Ratchino type were the main funeral monuments of the Votians and parts of the eastern Ests. All the monuments of the 10th–12th centuries from the large territory of northeastern Estonia, the Gdov region, and the Izhora plateau are similar in their type and form a unified cultural province. It is impossible to separate the archaeological antiquities of the ancestors of the Vod’ people from those of northeastern Estonians. Molecular genetic data testify to the kinship of the Baltic-Finnish population in this area. The decisive factors that separated the Voda ancestors from other groups of northeastern Estonians were the Old Russian colonization of the Izhora Plateau and the northeastern Prychudy, the Crusader conquest of Estonia, and the formation of the Narva frontier. Based on archeology and molecular genetics data, the author concludes that the lower Luga and Izhora plateau territories belong to the ancient Votic area. Whether the southern tribal grouping of the Vodo in the Gdov Prichudye ever existed remains debatable. There is no convincing evidence to support its reality.

 

KEYWORDS: Votians, Baltic-Finnish peoples, Northwestern of Russia, Novgorod land, archaeological sources, historical ethnography, material culture, burial rite

 

DOI 10. 312 5 0/2 618 - 8 6 0 0 -2 02 3 -3 (21) - 6 8 - 8 9
УДК 3 9 (= 511.1)

 

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