Lyubshan fortress

Lyubshan fortress
The Lyubshan Fortress is located in close proximity to the Staroladozhskaya dacha - adjacent to its territory.
The fortress was erected at the turn of the 6th-7th centuries as a fortress of the Finno-Ugric tribes on the site of an older settlement (according to radiocarbon analysis, the artifacts found here belong to the beginning of the first millennium AD), rebuilt on a stone foundation around 700, and stopped its existence by the X century.
The construction of the fortress in the last quarter of the 7th - first half of the 8th centuries is associated with the appearance of the Slavic population in the Ladoga area.
There are no historical documents mentioning the fortress - it is not known what the contemporaries called this place. Archaeologists named it Lyubshanskaya by its location, on the heights of the right bank of the Volkhov at the confluence of the Volkhov river Lyubsha.
The first exploratory excavations were carried out in this area at the turn of the 1960s-1970s by archaeologists S. Orlov, G. Lebedev, V. Petrenko. At the same time, the presence and characteristics of the cultural layer was established and the stone structures of the fortress rampart were found.
In 1997, the St. Petersburg expedition of the archaeologist E. A. Ryabinin began excavations, during which the significance of the monument was fully revealed and shown. The excavations continued with interruptions for about five years. Excavation reports were published in 2002 and 2003, but the full materials of the excavations were never published due to Ryabinin's illness.
The closest analogues of the Lyubshan Fortress are located in Central Europe, in the area of ​​settlement of the Western Slavs - from the Danube to the Polish Pomorie.
The fortress wall of the Lyubshan fortress was a clay rampart about 3 m high, fortified with two supports of loosely folded stones. A protective wall of logs was erected on the rampart. The total height of the defensive structure was, according to archaeologists, up to 7 m.
On the site of the fortress, traces of Finno-Ugric fishermen have been traced since the 3rd century. At the turn of the 6th-7th centuries, a wooden prison appeared on the rampart on the site of an ancient camp. By the beginning of the 8th century, the fort was burned, presumably by the Slavs. At the beginning of the VIII century, on the site of the Finnish prison, a stone-earth Lyubshan fortress was built, the nature of the construction of which allows it to be attributed to the construction of the West Slavic type. Around 753, on the other side, 2 km from the fort upstream along the Volkhov, a Scandinavian (presumably founded by immigrants from the island of Gotland) settlement of Aldeygya, Aldeygyuborg (Old Scandal Aldeigja, Aldeigjuborg), the future Ladoga appears.