Radiocarbon Dating of Medieval Buildings in the Mountainous Part of Ingushetia (Northern Caucasus, Russia)

There are hundreds of preserved medieval buildings in the mountainous part of Ingushetia, including Christian churches, crypts, temples, sanctuaries, battle towers, and living buildings. The chronology of their construction period is still questioned, as there are no radiocarbon (14C) dates published for these buildings and their dating is mainly based on architectural features, a few historical sources, and sometimes on accompanying archaeological material. The aim of this study is to assess more precisely the period of their construction. To do this, we selected the 10 most prominent medieval buildings that contain wooden construction elements and sampled these wooden elements in order to apply 14C accelerator mass-spectrometry dating (AMS) followed by wiggle-matching. From two of these buildings, plaster and mortar were also sampled for 14C AMS dating. This is the first time that these kinds of analyses have been performed for medieval buildings from the mountainous part of Ingushetia. For 6 out of 10 buildings, we acquired sufficiently precise dates that helped us to clarify their construction period. For the other 4 buildings, the acquired dates are still informative but could be refined further with additional 14C analyses. The calibrated dates obtained cover the period from AD 662 until recent time with the majority of them concentrated in 15th–17th centuries.