Beljamen

Beljamen was a Golden Horde city on the right bank of the Volga near the place where the river approaches the Don. Its remains are associated with the Vodyanskoye site, north of Dubovka. At the meeting of the Volga route and routes across the steppe, the city joined the river towns of the Horde to a wider network of exchange.

Excavations have uncovered buildings and a stone-lined underground water conduit, as well as large numbers of coins struck between 1317 and 1395. A settlement and Christian cemetery associated with people from Rus' also formed part of the complex. Evidence of destruction at the end of the fourteenth century has been linked to Timur's campaign against the Golden Horde in 1395, when the towns of the lower Volga suffered heavily.