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Old Russian peasant embroidery has long attracted the attention of researchers because of the archaic nature of its motifs. Thanks to the work of Gorodtsov, (1) it has found a stable place among the material sources on the history of old Russian and old Slavic beliefs, and is today regarded as ranking among archeological sources. But the ornamented Russian peasant fabrics of medieval times have, for all practical purposes, not survived, and it is work of the 19th and early 20th century (the so-called embroideries in archaic style) that serves as the main source for studying them. When employing such recent embroideries for the purpose of studying ancient Russian paganism, historians sometimes forget that embroidery (as distinct from archeological materials) remained, for the many centuries since the downfall of paganism in Russia, a component part of the living folk culture and, consequently, could not but undergo significant changes. The work that is essential in the utilization of historical sources — identification of temporally diverse strata, and relative and absolute dating of them — has not yet been performed in this regard. The present article makes no pretense to any complete analysis of archaic Russian embroidery, but contains only a few conclusions to which the author has been led by study of primitive religious symbols. (2)

A correct understanding of the process of formation of a number of modern peoples, and of the genesis of feudalism, depends upon the accuracy of dating of early medieval archeological materials. However, the various parts of the currently accepted chronology are of very unequal value, and this chronology has become obsolete in many respects. It was developed bit by bit, beginning at the end of the 19th century, and often empirically. Therefore, its dates are often vague (‘‘5th-6th centuries,""5th-7th centuries" and even"5th-8th centuries"). This chronology was based on a small number of burials with coins (Kerch, Suuk-Su, Chmi), while the tremendous number of burials containing no coins have been dated by looking for individual approximate analogies in reference monuments.

Relics of the 4th-7th centuries along the Oka River and in the Cis-Urals and the steppes are described briefly here, with but a single correlational table for Birsk, in order to leave more space for the 8th century in Eastern Europe, Siberia, and Sogdiana. The list of major artifacts and grave numbers permits the reader to check what is set forth without correlational tables. Finno-Ugrian antiquity is marked by an abundance of 6th century graves, poorly represented by excavations in the south.