Daugmale

Daugmale

Daugmale ( Latvian. Daugmale ) or Daugmal site of ancient settlement - a site of ancient settlement on the left bank of the Western Dvina River (Daugava), 22 km south-east of Riga ( Latvia ).

Archaeological excavations of the ancient city were carried out in 1933, 1935-1937, 1966-1970. The most ancient finds - bronze sickles and stone tools date from the end of the II millennium BC. er The fortifications of the settlement appeared at the beginning of our era.

The city has existed since the beginning of the X century . It was located in the district of Ptselene of the Zemgale land of Upmal . The city had several villages - settlements on the islands of Tomb and Marcinsala, and the settlement of Lavskol on the opposite bank of the Daugava. In IX - the first floor. The X century settlement was completely Zemgale, in the XI century Daugmale was already largely Liv , then Scandinavians also lived here. Settlement area of ​​0.4 hectares, posts - 2 hectares, harbor, two ground burial grounds - Daugmales Lives (VII — XII century, Zemgala-village-latgala-Scandinavia-Livskoe) and Tomes Narynyas (XI — XII century, Livskoye).

The heyday of the city - 2nd floor. X century - 1st floor. The 11th century, when settlements with an ethnically mixed population (zemgals, Latgals , Livs, Ruthenians and Scandinavians) became the center of transit trade and crafts. More than 190 coins of the 8th — 12th centuries (Arab, Byzantine, and Western European) were found in Daugmale, 130 of them are separate finds, 60 in treasures. Housing, furnace-smelting furnaces (found 265 crucibles and their fragments), jewelry and other workshops with tools, household outbuildings, handicrafts, including eastern and western designs, as well as various imported items (glass beads, bronze and silver bars, Russian slate spindles, etc.). The city was treated with bronze, tin and silver - products from Daugmale (pendants - figurines, crosses, miniature hatchets, etc.) come across in the territory of modern Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Finland.

The decline of the city began in the middle of the 11th century and was associated with the appearance of the Polotsk cities of Gertsyk and Kukenois in the Lower Podvinie . The city finally fell into disrepair at the end of the XII - beginning of the XIII century, when the fortifications of Daugmale were destroyed and were no longer restored. The destruction was due to the construction of Riga by the Germans, since Daugmale was its trading rival. Perhaps with this is connected the only, albeit indirect, mention of Daugmale in the sources - in the Chronicle of Livonia of Heinrich of Latvia “Zemgale harbor”. In 1200, Pope Innocent III , under the threat of a church curse, banned all merchants from entering the Zemgale harbor to trade. The same chronicle describes a case when a merchant and a ship pilot were executed for violating this prohibition.