Evolution of mountain settlement forms in the Northern societies of Alania-Ossetia by the beginning of the 19th century

The historical typology of settlement forms is of key importance in describing the socio-territorial structure of a society and the spatial organization of productive forces. The socio-historical approach, based on documentary evidence from the 18th–19th centuries, allows us to identify different types of settlement, determine their characteristics, and explain the change and sequence of forms. The northern mountain societies of Alania-Ossetia (Tagaur, Kurtat, Alagir and Digor) had access to the pre-Caucasian plain. They were historically united not only by their geographical location, but also by common features of social history, including a similar rhythm of settlement system development. The basic form of settlement is a rural community as a territorial neighborhood association of individual households, which are grouped into several related groups-families. The formation of the elite depended on the number of dependent people and the methods of their exploitation, but above all on the extent to which a specific family could overcome traditional communal ties. The first step necessary to break the communal shackles was the complete allocation of family land ownership - first of all, receiving one’s share of pastures. In order to finally consolidate a high class status and economic independence, it was necessary to found one’s own village. An alternative way to create a feudal estate in Digor society was the subordination of the community to lords outside it. Ossetian mountain settlements that had formed by the beginning of the 19th century belonged to four main types. The first type were rural neighboring communities with household ownership of arable and hayfield lands and common ownership of pastures and forests. The second type were neighboring communities in which the process of social differentiation had reached the point of the emergence of an early feudal nobility. The third type was a feudal estate inhabited by dependent peasants obliged to pay rent for the use of land belonging to a family of the upper class. The fourth type was a rural community that lived on its own land, being in feudal dependence on a family of the upper class, which had appropriated the supreme right to the communal land fund.