The study of the chemical composition of historical glasses is widely used in archaeometry. The results of such analyses provide information on the probable date, place, and technological features of their production. Over time, a weathered layer may form on the surface of the glass, which differs in composition from the original one. To determine the initial composition using conventional methods (for example, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy), the weathered layer should be removed. For historical objects, such manipulation is unacceptable and should be minimized. One of the methods for analyzing the chemical composition with minimal damage to a sample is laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. The aim of this work was to develop a LIBS method, which makes it possible to perform a quantitative analysis of lead silicate glasses, including glasses containing a weathered layer. Reference glasses with a variable content of potassium, silicon, and lead oxides were synthesized, and based on the LIBS spectra, a calibration dependence was obtained that made it possible to measure the concentration of lead and potassium oxides in glasses within 70–85 and 5–20 wt%, respectively. The method was applied to analyze the composition of the glaze on a historic glazed tile from the burial church in the Euphrosinian monastery in Polotsk (the second half of the 12th century AD). The crater formed with the laser beam on the glazed surface was about 200 microns. Such damage is negligible compared to the total surface area of the tile (~10 cm²). The thickness of the weathered glaze layer was 70 microns, which was determined using variation in lead oxide content.

The paper is focused on the use of the meander motif in décor of the Old Rus’ church masonry from 11th to early 13th century. Attention is drawn to compositional peculiarities and the diversity of patterns in meander frieze on church faзades in Kiev (St. Sophia, Dormition and Saint Michael’s Golden Dome Monasteries, and The Saviour Church at Berestovo), Chernigov (Transfiguration and Saint Parascheva Piatnitsa Churches), and Polotsk (The Saviour Church in the Convent of Saint Euphrosyne). Comparing these with the contemporaneous phenomenon in Byzantine and Transcaucasian architecture, the author comes to a conclusion that from the first half of 11th century the simple non-directional П-shaped patterns and more complicated variants characteristic of the Constantinople builders’ style were used in parallel. Meander’s place in the façade composition in all the Old Russian churches was meant to disclose the internal structure of buildings.

The article considers the Church of Our Saviour in Berestovo (Kiev) in terms of its place in the early Russian architecture of the premongol period. Several outstanding architectural features point us to the architecture of Polotsk, namely the cross-shaped layout arranged with porticoes, the trefoil shape of the portico vaulting, and the recessed brickwork without applying the rubble stone courses. The degree of innovation embodied in these features however is defined by the dating of the church, which differs much in the recent literature, from 1060s to 1120s. The new observations on the brick features and foundations technology made on the base of the field documentation of the excavations of 1914, 1989–1991, and 2003 expand the characteristic of the building methods used for the construction of the church and lead to the conclusion that only approximate dating (late 11th — early 12th century) is possible. This dating has an importance in defining the chronology of the architecture of Polotsk. This research has been completed with the support of the Russian Foundation of Basic Research, project № 19-012-00311 “St. Sophia cathedral in Polotsk. The building, its history and architecture. Materials of archaeological exploration, 1970–1980-ies”.

—Reconstructing the evolution of the geomagnetic field in the European part of Russia has been an extremely challenging problem due to the still limited data meeting the up-to-date quality criteria. The paper presents the results of archaeomagnetic studies for five groups of fragments of baked clay bricks from architectural monuments of the 18th to 19th centuries in the Yaroslavl region. Paleointensity of the samples was determined by the Triaxe method involving a series of continuous high-temperature measurements. The paleointensity determinations satisfying the up-to-date quality criteria are obtained from 71 samples of 19 fragments of five archaeomagnetic groups. The obtained paleointensity data are compared with the existing data for the European part of Russia and regional reference curves for Western and Eastern Europe.

The history of studying secular architecture of the Old Rus’ in premongol period (10th–13th centuries)is considered in the article. It is argued that the problem of the correspondence between the written, pictorial, and archaeological sources was the central one, while the researchers were focused on the question of interpretation and correlation of the terms used in the written sources, such as seni, terem, gridnitsa, vezha, first investigated by Ivan Zabelin in the late 19th century. The analysis of the growing corpus of the archaeological remains of the masonry civil buildings (more than 20 at the moment) was held within the framework of the mentioned discussion, which caused the wide spread disputable hypotheses. On the contrary, the typology of the civil architecture, topographical features of the sites, and their links with the Byzantine and Western European analogs had been studied superficially. The problems of research of the civil architecture in 14th–15th-century Novgorod are considered to be close to the ones mentioned above, and demanding the comprehensive research.