ИСТИНА

There are hundreds of medieval buildings in the mountain part of Ingushetia, including early Christian churches, crypts, temples, war towers, and living buildings. These buildings contain a certain amount of timber that may be used for extension of tree-ring chronologies in the Caucasus. These chronologies are essential for high resolution climatic and environmental reconstructions as well as for the dating of past human activity supported by wooden artifacts. Moreover, the chronology of construction activity is very important for the understanding of the dynamics of human settlements and people migrations in the Caucasus region. It can also reveal new evidence on climate and environmental history in the Caucasus, because construction activity is inevitably connected to climate change and human adaptation to it. For the aims of this study we collected wooden material from medieval buildings of mountain Ingushetia and analyzed it by means of dendrochronological and radiocarbon methods. 135 samples were collected from wooden construction elements of 40 stone buildings. All the samples were prepared and tree-ring widths were measured. Maximum length of tree-ring series reaches 177 years. Most of the wooden elements were made from pine, oak, and lime. We additionally prepared 18 wooden samples from six buildings (two early Christian churches, one early war tower, two temples and a crypt) for accelerated mass spectrometry ( AMS) radiocarbon analysis. These samples were collected from distinct tree rings that allowed us to use wiggle-matching procedure for the enhancement of precision of the dating results. Four samples of plaster and mortar from two buildings were additionally collected for AMS analysis for comparison purposes. The time period covered by the samples is about one millennium (9-19 cc.). In the paper we discuss the results of the AMS analyses and their potential use for high-resolution climatic and environmental reconstructions in the region. Acknowledgement: The study was supported by the RF President grant no. MK-1351.2017.6.