gh FINDINGS OF ANCIENT RUSSIAN FOOTWEAR

Archaeologists normally find a lot of leather goods while digging the soil layers of Moscow. Apparently, the Muscovites used to flaunt in the leather footwear since the time of the city foundation, and the bast shoes were worn by the peasants. Museums of Moscow store hundreds of thousands of footwear details found by the archeologists within dozens of years in the megalopolis, the collection increasing every year. Strange as it may seem, the scientists were debating how to handle these precious findings, who and how would study them. Finally, this challenge was undertaken by Dmitry Osipov, specialist from the Museum of Archeology of Moscow. He examined carefully thousands of ancient footwear specimens, consulted with shoemakers and even with orthopedists, and obtained very interesting results.

A traditional opinion used to be that the ancient Slavs were people of short height. "This is not true. The average length of the masculine soles of the 16th century corresponds to contemporary sizes 25-27. The boots of such sizes fit the persons of minimum 170-172 centimeters high," - says Dmitry Osipov. Anthropologists share his opinion. In fact, people from the Vyatich tribe, who inhabited Moscow and surrounding areas up to the 14th century, were the tallest people among the Slav tribes. Contemporary Muscovites can be proud, since they are descendants of the medieval athletes.

The ancient Russians adopted boots footwear from the Tatar and Mongol tribes, and in the 14th century boots became most popular in Moscow, the shoemaking being the most widespread occupation in ancient Russian towns. Shoemaking is a complicated process, that is why the most advanced technologies of leather processing and sewing were already applied at that time. Earlier, the Slavs did not possess the required skills of the thick leather processing, the soles used to be made of several thin layers. But in the 16th century the technology changed: the shoemakers started to use the rough oxhide for the soles, the soft leather for the upper part, and the low quality leather for the lining. They normally attached the wooden heel under the sole, the heel was covered by leather. The boots were usually knee-high, the edge being cut at angle.

Although hundreds of years have passed since the time the footwear was made, expensive boots are easy to recognize: the leather is high-quality, the bootleg is decorated by stampings and by a small round cut on top which was draped by beautiful cloth. A bronze wire was stretching across the heel and a leather stripe was going along it. At that period red boots were considered to be stylish. Up to the 18th century the boots for men and women were cut alike. However, the scientists believe that small boots with narrow bootlegs were most likely intended for women. It appears that there was no difference between the left and the right boots, the soles being absolutely symmetrical. Nevertheless, among the findings there were several pairs of the 16th century boots with the left and right soles cut differently. Osipov believes that these were the first orthopedic shoes for the lengthwise flat feet correction.

A multi-layer heel was invented later and by the 16th century it came into fashion in Russia. Muscovites started to wear the 6-7 centimeter high-heeled boots which at that time did not have the instep supporters and therefore it was not easy to walk in them. In the second half of the 16th century the Muscovites started to use a heelplate - an iron crescent with calks, which were nailed into the heel. Later on, the calks on the heelplate were replaced by the nail holes. In the 18th century Peter the Great introduced a fashion for the European footwear made under a more advanced technology. A Russian shoemaker used to sew the footwear on the knee fixing the details by a special belt - a shoemaker's stirrup. When the boot was ready the shoemaker would put it on the last to beat off the seam. Alternatively, in Europe a shoemaker put a shoe on the last when starting the shoemaking process, as a result the footwear would come out more elegant. Such an indispensable detail as the insole was also adopted from Europe.

Looking at the shoes and boots of those remote times we admire their modern look. Evidently the contemporary fashionable designers pick up their ideas studying the medieval footwear collections in the museums.

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