Relationships between the Slavic world and the Khazar Kaganate on the Seversky Donets river: an ethnocultural aspect

The article addresses the issue of complicated and multifaceted relations of the Slavs and the world of Eastern European steppe and forest-steppe peoples in the end of 1st millennium AD. The current data provided by the archaeological sources allow reviewing the so far dominant standpoint about intrinsic and permanent conflicting relations between the Slavs and the population of the Khazar Kaganate. There is a large number of artefacts found in the Seversky Donets basin contact zone, which allow us to talk about some positive complementary relations between the Northern peoples and the tribes of the forest-steppe Khazaria. The facts confirming mutual ethnocultural and technological impacts can be traced in a number of aspects: ceramics, house building, fortification and farming. The recent research and review of the old data suggest that the Saltovskaya population had a positive multidimensional effect on the material production, culture, and general socioeconomic condition of their Slavic neighbouring tribes. The reciprocal impact from the Slavic side was analogous, yet not so strongly marked. Such cooperation and mutual influences led to a peaceful coexistence, and on some separate sites ? to the mixing of different ethnic groups. This fact suggests the beginning of a population (identified as syncretic in its material and spiritual culture) in the zone of borderline contacts between the Slavic world and multiethnic population of the Khazar Kaganate.