Georgi Vladimirov. Earrings in the Form of a Question Mark from Bolgaria (13th-14th cc.): the Material Traces of the Cumans and the Golden Horde in the Culture of the Second Bulgarian Empire / Executive Editors: A. G. Sitdikov, S. G. Bocharov. – Kazan: Institute of Archaeology of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, 2018. – 128 p.

Georgi Vladimirov. Earrings in the Form of a Question Mark from Bolgaria (13th-14th cc.): the Material Traces of the Cumans and the Golden Horde in the Culture of the Second Bulgarian Empire / Executive Editors: A. G. Sitdikov, S. G. Bocharov. - Kazan: Institute of Archaeology of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, 2018. - 128 p.

The monograph is dedicated to a study of oriental influences and their material agents in the culture of the Second Bulgarian Empire on the Danube (12th-14th centuries). These processes are reviewed on the example of a specific type of adornments - the so-called “question mark earrings”. The author addresses the theories of their origination and distribution in the Middle Ages as a nomadic type of fashion which emerged in the culture of the Asian peoples of the Kimek-Kipchak circle and spread in the period of their resettlement. Later, this fashion blossomed in the culture of the Golden Horde and acquired a supra-ethnic nature, also emerging in the areas of influence of the nomadic empire. The author suggests a thesis that in the 14th century the cultural and ethnic situation in medieval Bulgaria was “cumanized”, and in the first half of the 14th century - even “tatarized”. These processes are carried out in the conditions of an absent or diminished cultural influence on the territories by the Byzantine factor.

The publication is intended for experts in the field of history, archaeology, art history, jewelry and ethnography, museum workers, students in the field of history and everyone interested in the medieval material culture.