the backbone of later Kievan Rus' – was operating in the 9th century.Noonan, The Monetary System of Kiev 1987, p. 396. Based on his examination of the archaeological evidence, Zuckerman concludes that Kiev originated as a fortress on the Khazar border with Levedia and that only after the Magyars departed for the west in 889 did the middle Dnieper region start to progress economically. Volkhov river sites A number of historians, the first of whom was Vasily Bartold, have advocated a more northerly position for the khaganate. They have tended to emphasize ibn Rustah's report as the only historical clue to the location of the khagan's residence. Recent archaeological research, conducted by Anatoly Kirpichnikov and Dmitry Machinsky, has raised the possibility that this polity was based on a group of settlements along the Volkhov River, including Ladoga, Lyubsha, Duboviki, Alaborg, and Holmgard (modern Rurikovo Gorodische). "Most of these were initially small sites, probably not much more than stations for re-fitting and resupply, providing an opportunity for exchange and the redistribution of items passing along the river and caravan routes". If the anonymous traveller quoted by ibn Rustah is to be believed, the Rus of the Khaganate period made extensive use of the Volga route to trade with the Near East, possibly through Bulgar and Khazar intermediaries. His description of the Rus' island suggests that their center was at Holmgard, an early medieval precursor of Novgorod whose name translates from Old Norse as "the river-island castle". The First Novgorod Chronicle describes unrest in Novgorod before Rurik was invited to come to rule the region in the 860s. This account prompted Johannes Brøndsted to assert that Holmgard-Novgorod was the khaganate's capital for several decades prior to the appearance of Rurik, including the time of the Byzantine embassy in 839. Machinsky accepts this theory but notes that, before the rise of Holmgard-Novgorod, the chief political and economic centre of the area was located at Aldeigja-Ladoga. However, Nosov (1990) stated that archaeological evidence recovered at Rurikovo Gorodische puts the terminus post quem for the hill-fort's establishment decades later: dendrochronological analysis showed that trees used in construction at the site were felled between the years 889 and 948, and radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples collected from a ditch at the site of "Holmgard" trace back to 880(±20). Islands in fringe theories According to one fringe theory, the Rus' khagan resided somewhere in Scandinavia or even