The Kursk Regional Museum of Archaeology houses a clay whistle, which was accidentally discovered by the museum staff S.A. Ermakova in 2000, 300 meters from the left bank of the river Psyol, in a newly ploughed plot of land in the village of Krupets of the Belovo district, in the Kursk region.

The toy in the form of a bird on a short cone-shaped leg was made of clay and after firing it received a beige tint. There are no traces of paint or glaze. The height of the whistle is 45 mm, the length from the muzzle to the breast is 37 mm. On the head of the bird there is a crest with no glaze or painting, and round pebble eyes. The foot has a lens-shaped depression at the base for stability. On the right side there is a small play hole pierced, and a whistle is placed in the tail. Back in ancient times, the lower wall of the mouthpiece of the whistle hole was chipped off, after which the silenced whistle ended up in the village dump.

According to Vladimir Povetkin, director of the “Center of Musical Antiquities of Veliky Novgorod”, it was possible to produce only two sounds from the whistle. One by simply blowing into the main hole, the second by blocking the side hole. It was possible to establish that the trills of the whistle consisted of the G of the second octave. Vladimir Povetkin has established that the Kursk toy is similar to the two whistles found in Novgorod region, and the techniques of manufacture and appearance are so similar that the expert put forward an assumption that they were made in the same workshop.

The first of the Novgorod toys was found near the district center of Lubytino (the Novgorod region) by local residents. The second whistle was discovered during archaeological excavations of Novgorod in 1972 in the city layer of the second quarter of the 15th century, which also allowed to date the rest of the whistles of this group.

The Novgorod toy could get to the Kursk region through trade, which at that time connected different parts of the Russian land. The bird whistle found in the village of Krupets is the oldest of all whistling clay toys found on the territory of the Kursk region.

The Kursk Regional Museum of Archaeology presents a cross pendant of the mid–18th — early 19th centuries. The cross was discovered by the museum staff in 2001 during rescue excavations of the site and the defensive rampart of the Kapystichi ancient settlement located in the Rylsky district of the Kursk region.

It has been established that the late 9th — early 11th century is the earliest stage in the history of the site, as evidenced by the remains of utility and residential buildings belonging to the Romensky culture (early medieval Slavic archaeological culture of the 8th–10th centuries). In addition, since the 17th century services were held at the church (first wooden, then brick) on the site of the settlement, near which a parish cemetery appeared.

33 burials were fully or partially examined in the area of the excavation on the site and on the rampart of the settlement. Six of the burials, probably the most recent, were embedded in the slopes of the rampart. It was possible to determine the sex and approximate age of the buried people in 11 cases. On the whole in this area of the cemetery there were 3 children’s and 21 adult burials, four female and seven male burials. Only two graves (No. 8 and no. 32) contained cross pendants, three contained jewelry (glass earrings, remnants of headdresses), and two had metal clothing accessories (buttons).

Direct analogues of the cross from the museum collection are held in the Russian Museum of Ethnography. Such crosses appeared in the late 17th century, but in this case, the mid–18th — early 19th century should be considered the most likely dating of the find. Interestingly, among the finds are crosses, typical of Old Believers. Also noteworthy is the absence of crosses in most of the graves suitable for analysis. A similar situation has already been registered earlier in the study of burials of the 18th–19th centuries. Some experts believe that this can be explained by the fact that over time it became less popular to leave metal objects in graves during burial rituals, following popular beliefs. It was allowed to leave the copper cross in the grave, but it was often replaced by a wooden or wax one. By the 19th century, metal crosses were practically never used in the funeral rites. The predominance of samples dating back to the 17th–18th centuries among the crosses of Kapystichi cemetery, confirms this point of view.