ABSTRACT
The efforts of Olga to safeguard and further Rus trade with the Byzantines and to propagate her new-found cult have left no direct archaeological trace. Not one Byzantine artefact or church building can be unequivocally attributed to the fifteen years or so Olga spent as a Christian in Kiev, where she was served, presumably, by Eastern Orthodox clergy. In fact the number of solid objects of unquestionably tenth-century Byzantine provenance, whether coins or ornaments, found along the Dnieper Way is small. This, and the apparently inconclusive outcome of Olga’s negotiations at Constantinople, tends to blur the implications of other forms of archaeological evidence of the middle and second half of the tenth century.
