Hoards and Hoard Hunting as a Sociocultural Phenomenon in the Life of the Cossacks in the 18th—19th Centuries

Abstract

The article examines the evolution of the Cossacks’ ideas about hoards in the territories of their traditional residence — Zaporozhye, Don, Kuban. The history of hoards is inscribed in the space of traditional activities of the Cossack communities, accompanied by the accumulation of material values, including money. The authors reveal the forms and degree of participation of the Don and Black Sea (Kuban) Cossacks in unauthorized (predatory) excavations of numerous antiquities of the south of the Russian Empire of the 19 th— early 20 th centuries, including hoard hunting, and identified the factors that determined the transformation of the cultural memory of the Cossacks about the hoards in the specified period.