The Kursk Museum of Archaeology displays a double-spiral pendant. It is made from round-section wire with a diameter of about two millimeters. The decoration was discovered as part of the Gaponovo hoard, found by local residents in 1994 near the northeastern outskirts of the village of Gaponovo, in the Korenevsky District of Kursk Region. In 1996, the hoard was transferred to the collections of the Kursk Museum of Archaeology by the Left-Bank Early Slavic Expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

This pendant was part of a composition of a women’s pectoral necklace, dated to the late 7th — early 8th century, and is associated with the Kolochin archaeological culture, whose bearers are considered by scholars to be early Slavs. According to archaeologists Andrey Oblomsky and Igor Gavritukhin, double-spiral pendants were connected by a chain or cord, onto which copper alloy tubes or spirals were threaded. Like most finds from ancient assemblages, this hoard was discovered accidentally. The area was the site of a pioneer camp belonging to the “Rubilnik” low-voltage devices factory. The hoard was discovered by local workers during the laying of a pipeline to the camp’s bathhouse. At that time, Elena Arkhipova, the head of the laboratory for the Left-Bank Early Slavic Expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was present at the site and documented the location of the find, collecting most of the items.

An archaeological trench was opened at the site, and the study began. The hoard was found within a cultural layer, and according to the finders, the items formed a dense, spindle-shaped cluster.

The presented spiral pendant is not unique. Similar hoards are known in the region, which includes the forest-steppe and part of the forest zone of the Dnieper area, and were first discovered in the late 19th century. Due to the limited area of the excavation, it is difficult to precisely date the decorations from the Gaponovo hoard, but archaeologists believe they were made in the mid-7th century. This conclusion is based on the study of analogous items from numismatic materials that have been dated to the aforementioned period.