Professor Holod Awarded a Collaborative Research
Grant from the Getty Foundation for the Study of a Medieval Kurgan

Renata Holod, Professor and Warren Woodfin, Visiting Scholar in the History of Art Department, University of Pennsylvania, together with Oleksander Halenko (Institute of History of Ukraine, Kyiv), Vitaly Otroshchenko and Yuri Rassamakin (Institute of Archaeology, Kyiv, and the excavators of the kurgan) have formed a team to study the burial of a Qipchak khan in the Pontic steppe of southern Ukraine. The grave goods are a luxurious assemblage of gold - embroidered silk costumes, preciousmetal objects, ceramicvessels, paradearmor and horse trappings. Clustering around a late twelfth - early thirteenth century date, they are of diverse origins: products of Islamic Syria, Byzantine Asia Minor, Kievan Rus’, and Western Europe. With the support of a Getty Collaborative Research Grant, our research seeks to understand how this array of artifacts arrived in the possession of this steppe leader, and how they were interpreted as expressions of power on the borders between the Mediterranean and Eurasian worlds. 

For more information on the project, see: www.chingul.org.ua