Western European reckoning counters of archaeological burials of Siberia: historiographicalreview

The problems associated with West European reckoning counters in archaeological sites of Siberia have been studied since the middle of the past century. For this period, the impressive array of sources have been published; some analytical articles discussing the dating of reckoning counters, the ways of delivering them to Siberia, and other problems have appeared. At the current stage of the research, there is a need to summarize the achieved results and to try to identify the opportunities for the further study of this subject. This type of sources - reckoning counters - is very specific due to its dual nature: it is a numismatic and at the same time archeological source. In this context, it is reasonable to divide the historiography and the history of this subject into two parts: numismatic and archeologi-cal ones. The problems associated with the reckoning counters dated to the XVII - XIX centuries have been well studied in the foreign numismatics. The fundamental works which analyzed and dated these sources were published in the beginning of the past century. During the following years, this subject has remained of great interest to researchers. However, the foreign works devoted to counting tokens have not been translated into the Russian language and are still unavailable to Russian scientists. Numismatist Ivan Spassky and archeologist Andrey Dulson were the first Russian researchers who began studying the problems associated with West European reckoning counters. Ivan Spassky gave the detailed numismatic description to reckoning counters, while Andrey Dulson efficiently used this source for dating some grave fields of the late Middle Ages. Another important achievement of these researchers is the very detailed publications of some sources. Since some tokens are not available or lost, their papers are the only source for a number of archeological sites. The work of B.V. Melnikov is a real breakthrough in dating of reckoning counters and burial sites in which they have been found. In my opinion, the most important contribution of the author is that he has clearly demonstrated the broad opportunities of using counting tokens as dating material. The next important step is the classification of counting pfennigs proposed by Ju.I. Ozheredov and A.V. Smolin. In addition to this, they are the first researchers who put forward the idea that the more detailed chronology could be constructed for the late Middle Ages on the basis of comprehensive research of mass series of counters. Another significant work is the article of M.A. Korusenko and O.A. Milistchenko: these authors have published some new sources setting the standard for further publications of numismatic materials. Moreover, they summarized all previous studies related to this subject and identified the opportunities for future research. The author of this article has also contributed to the research of the problems associated with West European reckoning counters.

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