The Kursk Museum of Archaeology houses a small B-shaped shoe buckle in the heraldic style with a faceted frame, a triangular shield, and three brass rivets. This artifact is dated to the 6th–7th centuries. The buckle is an accidental find, discovered in the village of Sosnovy Bor in the Belovsky district of the Kursk region. In December 2006, it was transferred to the museum’s collection.

In the Early Middle Ages, such buckles were mainly accessible to the elite of the time: chieftains, warriors, and tribal nobility. However, the fashion for heraldic belts and armor elements extended far beyond the settlement area of the described cultural formation. In the middle of the 6th century, among the Gothic tribes inhabiting southwestern Crimea, heraldic belt sets became fashionable, along with shoe fittings that echoed the style of these sets, featuring a large number of details. These were selected to match the style of the belt’s metal accessories.

The artifact on display belongs to the Kolochin culture, an early medieval archaeological culture of the 5th–7th centuries. Its main area covers the territory of the eastern part of the Gomel and Mogilev regions, as well as the adjacent areas of the Vitebsk region of Belarus, the Smolensk and Bryansk regions, and parts of the Kursk and Belgorod regions of Russia. Small enclaves of settlers from the main area were also present in the Lipetsk and Tambov regions of Russia and the Sumy and Chernihiv regions of Ukraine. Most researchers consider the bearers of this culture to be Slavs.

Among the “antiquities of the Antes, ” including hoards found in the Kursk region, there are “standalone” buckles and tips that do not match the size of the fittings for men’s belts. According to scholars, these items should be classified as shoe fittings or parts of a sword belt, although it is not possible to exclude their belonging to women’s accessories. There is no conclusive data available at present to confirm or refute any of the proposed hypotheses.