The Chersonesos mint proved to be a residential house, half of which was backfilled

An interesting observation about archaeologists: all of them adore discovering monuments of the utmost importance, unique, rare, the most significant, and so on.

So it was with the already described baptistery of Prince Vladimir. You find the skeleton of a church: yes, this is where the prince was baptised. You find a bead: yes, it was worn by a noblewoman of the first Chersonesites. You find a drawing on the wall of a salting cistern: the only underground prison on the northern Black Sea coast.

Then another archaeologist arrives and says that the bead was found in a secondary layer of Chersonesos building, that the prince could have been baptised anywhere at all, and that the drawings in the cistern hint at no prison whatever.

A similar embarrassment befell the celebrated mint of Chersonesos. The ground and basement floors were very solidly built, and gave an impression of the structure's importance. In the ceremonial room bronze blanks were found, from which coins might, so to speak, have been made. In another corner of the building there was a furnace. Well, that's it, settled, the Mint has been found.

Until another expedition arrived and said: but this is a standard Greek dwelling house. And there are four of them side by side. And in the whole city there are more than 100. So much for the mint.

Incidentally, the house really is large, 500 square metres. But by the standards of the time it is middling, not elite. It was dug out right in the centre of the inhabited part of Chersonesos; the church began to protest and in the end half the house was filled back in, as if to say, there is no need for you to dig up so much.

The clergy are most interesting in this regard, and I shall write later about what sort of activity they have got up to there.