Medieval Glass Dishes from the Excavations of the Necropolis of the XI-XIII centuries at the Courtyard of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv: Restoration Research

Abstract

The authors carried out conservation and restoration studies to restore the full form of the five glass goblets discovered during archaeological research on the territory of the National Reserve «Sophia Kyivska» in 2014. Performed chemical analyzes allowed to establish that four of the five goblets belong to the group of products made of thin yellowish transparent silicon-lead-potassium glass, and one – to the lead glass. This will allow in the future to determine more precisely the place and time of producing such dishes and determine the routes of its arrival in Kyiv. All five findings were made in burial places, at the level of the legs of the dead. This gives grounds for linking the archaeological context with the funeral Christian ritual, when the dish with anointing oil was placed in a coffin at the feet of the dead. For this purpose, they did not use special utensils, but used the ones used in everyday life, and this can be proved by the finding of similar items during the excavations of temple or residential buildings in different towns of Rus-Ukraine. At the same time, we can admit the link between the use of such utensils in Scandinavian ritual practice of earlier time when ritual wine was drank from such utensils and then the broken goblets were placed into the grave. Such link may explain the fact of the presence of glass goblets in the graves from the territory of the Sophia courtyard, parts of which do not lie crushed in one place, but are separated far away from each other within the burial place.