Various ornithomorphic pendants made mainly of copper-based alloys were a common kind of personal women adornment in the North-West and North-East of Old Russia in the second half of the 10th–14th century. According to the historiographical tradition, most of the bird-shaped pendants were considered as images of waterfowl and were associated with Finno-Ugric mythology. The earliest hollow and plate pendants, which appeared in the second half of the 10th century and existed until the 11th – beginning of the 12th century depicted so-called “ducks”. However, since the 11th century the shape of the birds’ heads changed. Combs and cirri appeared, beaks became pointed and curved, paired compositions also appear. When considering pendants not only within the framework of typology, but also in the context of medieval art, we can find out stylistic and iconographic parallels. Bird images were depicted in a similar way on Old Russian pins, colts, wrist bracelets, bone, wooden and metal pommels, items of Eastern and Western toreutics. A significant argument in favor of correlating the pendants not with the heritage of paganism, but with the Christian tradition is the similarity of ornithomorphic images with the ones in book miniatures and white stone reliefs of the Vladimir-Suzdal churches.

The research was carried out as part of the program “Medieval Rus in the Eurasian historical and cultural space: emergence of archaeological cultures and cultural centers, development of a scientific approach to their study” (FMZF-2022-0015).