MOSCOW, September 21. A series of experiments related to historical methods of producing weapons and ceramics, making jewelry and costume details was launched by the Kulikovo Field Museum-Reserve on the 643rd anniversary of the Battle of Kulikovo in its groups on social networks. The first item that scientists and reenactors will talk about will be a relic of the Battle of Kulikovo — the tip of the Horde pike, the press service of the museum reported.
Archaeologists have already told a lot about the Battle of Kulikovo in a capacious and accessible format of video responses about historical myths and scientific facts, said the author of the project, the head of the exhibition department of the Kulikovo Field State Museum-Reserve, Kristina Stolyarova.
“»Now we want to help the modern a person to discover the era of the Middle Ages and reveal no less secrets and mysteries about how the details of clothing and weapons of people of the 14th century, presented in museums, and those that we see at historical festivals, were made,” she said.
The idea for a new project was born in the process of preparing a new exhibition on the history of metallurgy «Tula. City on the Iron River.» In order to clearly talk about metal production in the Middle Ages, museum staff invited a modern master to forge a knife from a kritsa found in a 14th-century settlement. The experiment revealed the strengths and weaknesses of medieval metallurgists and aroused the interest of the audience.
The next experiment was the making of a copy of the tip of a Horde spear-pike, found in the upper reaches of the Smolka River and presented in the relics hall of the Museum of the Battle of Kulikovo in Mokhovoy. For a long time, the tip was kept by the first guard of the Kulikovo field, caretaker of the memorial on Red Hill, Zakhar Fedorov. Then he handed it over to the teacher of the Mikhailovsky secondary school, Vyacheslav Kazansky. He, in turn, in 1983 — to the Tula Regional Museum of Local Lore. Together with other exhibits, the relic formed the stock collection of the Kulikovo Field museum-reserve in the late 90s.
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Initially, the artifact was erroneously dated to the late Middle Ages, but historians Tatyana and Andrei Naumov compared it with similar specimens from archaeological excavations on the territory of Rus' and the Horde and found out that such pike tips with long tetrahedral blades were the favorite weapon of the Horde cavalry of the era of the Don Massacre. Thus, the relic of the Battle of Kulikovo took its rightful place among finds from the battlefield in the museum in Mokhovoy. As one of the most striking exhibits, it was decided to repeat it during the experiment.
The total length of the lance tip is 35 cm, including the length of the sleeve — 9.6 cm, the feather is 25.4 cm. The sleeve is round in cross-section, with a diameter of 2.9 cm in the edge. At the edge of the edge, it has a through round hole with a diameter of 0. 4 cm for attaching to the shaft. The tip feather is made in the form of a tetrahedral dart with a square section (1.7 x 1.7 cm at the base) with an awl-shaped tip.
During the experiment, Ryazan blacksmith Mikhail Ratkin and archaeometallurgy specialist, leading researcher at the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences Vladimir Zavyalov, used two kritsa (pieces of iron obtained by processing ore) weighing 1.8 and 1.85 kg, found by archaeologists near the village of Strekalovka. After experimental forgings, which took 2–3 hours, bars of dense metal weighing 1.32 and 1.1 kg were obtained.
““Created iron in the Middle Ages was still very porous and contained a lot of slag. «was suitable for making objects, it needed to be forged. We also obtained some characteristics of the metallurgical process: forging a small kritsa took about 3 hours and about 20 kg of charcoal. The process itself was very labor-intensive and energy-consuming,» said Doctor of Historical Sciences Vitaly Zavyalov.
The heavier kritsa underwent 14 heatings in the forge and was folded and welded once during the forging process. Mikhail Ratkin initially tried to forge a lance from it, but the metal turned out to be too porous, and it was not possible to make a product from it.
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“When they forged the kritsa, the metal “crumbled” and began to crack, that is, it was not completely cleaned — it was necessary to fold it in several more layers and forge it in order to achieve complete homogeneity,” he noted.
The second kritsa was heated 17 times, forged to a rectangular shape. During the forging process, the semi-finished product was folded twice and the iron came out more dense. A pike was forged from this blank in 2 hours and 25 minutes. The replica also turned out not perfect — cracks appeared that were not on the workpiece.
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«We want to create a series of videos and talk about everyday life, jewelry, pottery, weapons of the 14th century. We plan to work with different craftsmen — glassblowers, those who deal with fabrics, jewelers, with reenactors who have knowledge. These will be experiments «, revealing the secrets of medieval crafts. We plan to use both tools and, if possible, materials from the era of interest. As a result, we will produce a series of products, prototypes of which were in use during the Battle of Kulikovo,» concluded Kristina Stolyarova.