RIGHT-BANK TSIMLYANSKAYA FORTRESS: MASONRY STRUCTURE

Abstract

The article is dedicated to an unexplored issue which is the system of masonry blocks in the largest white stone fortress of the Don river basin. The issue is also understudied for other white-stone fortresses of the Khazar Khaganate. The article is based on the materials of excavations of the southern and Eastern walls of the Right-Bank Fortress in 1987-1990 and 2007-2010 (Fig. 1). The raw slabs of the fortress wall base are wellpreserved. However, only a few overlying blocks have preserved in situ. The authors had to resort to reconstructions. For the southern wall, an "idealized" reconstruction was performed in 1994 (Fig. 2, 3). More careful reconstructions were carried out on the Eastern wall (Fig. 5-7). A new reconstruction of tower IV is proposed "after I. Satsiperov". Now, the width of the tower has reached 12 m. It includes a block of 2003 and block 3. It remains unclear whether there the tower contained a passage. The most "mysterious" block is the one vertically embedded among the slabs (Fig. 8). Based on the experience of reconstructions, the authors came to the following conclusion: reconstruction is not more than a study tool. One reconstruction option can be countered with another, which is often evidenced in publications.