The Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the State Historical Museum work for a seventh season at the Gnezdilovo burial ground near Suzdal

The Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the State Historical Museum are working for a seventh season at the Gnezdilovo burial ground near Suzdal. This year they found a wooden burial chamber measuring 3.1 by 2.7 metres, the roof of which had collapsed by the time of excavation. Inside lay a man aged 25-35, a horse and a dog, with heads to the west.

The reported finds are frankly a set of status symbols: a silver horseshoe-shaped fibula and buttons on the chest, a battle axe with a bone comb, horse harness with stirrups and bits fitted with bone plates, a spear, and a set of scales for weighing coins or metal. The archaeologists describe the deceased as the embodiment of military and administrative power.

Chamber burials of this type appeared in Rus' at the end of the 9th century together with newcomers from Scandinavia and continued throughout the 10th century; fewer than eighty such burials are known, from nine burial grounds. The find near Suzdal shows that the area was already attracting people of the military and administrative circle in the 10th century