Tara's footwear collection in the context of urban development (based on materials from the 2018 excavations)

The purpose of the article is to present the results of a typological analysis of leather products collected during excavations in the fortified part of the town of Tara in 2018, and also to attribute a log building with a passage, around which most of the fragments of leather shoes were concentrated, to characterize the historical context of the “archaeological leather” collection. A comparative historical and cartographic analysis made it possible to identify the remains of the log building, excavated in 2018, with the prefabricated house of the Tara veteran team. According to stratigraphy of bedding, finds of coins, marks on bricks, which paved the path leading to the building, the building itself and the archaeological leather gathered around it dates from the late 18th - late 19th centuries, which is consistent with the data of historical maps. The typological analysis of the shoe collection yielded the following results. The type of raw material and the technology of its processing have been established: leather of cattle, tanned with the help of plant extracts. The technological features of the manufacture of the found footwear are revealed. They are as follows: the use of birch bark inserts in the hard back and between the sole and the insole, the use of wooden pins for attaching heel flakes and soles details, lining of heels with mortised or nailed heeltaps and studs, use of an iron shank (instep support) to give additional rigidity to the structure and prevent deformation of the heel, attachment of felt insoles for the insulation of leather shoes. Judging by the cutting and assembly features, the main part of the collection’s shoe parts belongs to high shoes - welted boots. The cut of the preserved boot soles and heads indicates the dominance of the collection of boots with blunt noses and stacked heels up to 2.5 cm high. On the basis of the conducted research the authors came to certain conclusions. The difference between the 2018 collection and the materials of the excavations of previous years is the uniformity of the cut of the found boots, appropriate high jackboots for soldiers and non-commissioned officers of the internal guard battalions. The local accumulation of shoe parts, tools and scraps of recycled craft waste around the log building allows us to consider it a shoemaker’s workshop, specializing in the repair of footwear. Tara veteran soldiers who lived in the house of the disabled team organized a workshop, where quite professionally engaged in the repair of uniform shoes. The location of the study site on the territory of the veteran team explains the absence of aboriginal footwear in the 2018 collection, as well as women’s and children’s models that are present in the footwear collections of previous excavations. Attribution of the building as the home of the Tara veteran team and features of the collection, represented by uniform shoes, reveal the historical context of Tara as a town, in the appearance and life of which there were military features up to the end of the 19th century.

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