Urban planning in the territory of medieval Bolgar

Abstract

The article presents the studies of the urban planning of medieval Bolgar on the Volga river which represented a leading urban centre in the period of Volga Bolgaria and the Golden Horde. The dynamics of variations in the urban territory of Bolgar settlement in the period of its existence from 10th to 15th centuries were recreated on the basis of a stratigraphic scale of the settlement developed as a result of long-term archaeological work comprising the distribution of cultural layers, chrono-topography of the findings, spatial location of archaeological urban sites and the application of geographic information systems. Data from over 200 excavations located in different parts of the Bolgar settlement were processed and analysed. At the same time, the area of the site explored by archaeological excavations does not exceed 2 % of the total area of Bolgar in the Golden Horde period. The study included the generation of a series of cartograms, each of which corresponds to a certain stage of the town's development related to historical events which occurred both in the Volga-Kama region and the Eastern Europe. In addition, the registration of various dwelling types (both buried and ground), industrial (metallurgical and pottery kilns), public (bathhouses and wells), trading (a marketplace) and religious (mosques and mausoleums) sites allows to reconstruct the dynamics of the social topography of Bolgar town.