One of the earliest East European Cultures, 6000-3500 BCE. It goes as far as Hungary, and discoveries are still being made today.
Associated Region: Ukraine
Otherwise known as the Melgunov kurgan because it was discovered by General A. P. Melgunov in 1763, this was the first major find of Scythian gold. Early 6th century BCE, it is especially noteworthy because of the mixed Urartan-Scythian styles on some of the artefacts.
Хведiр Вовк in Ukrainian, Fedor Volkov was a major political figure. When forced to leave in 1879, he ended up studying the anthropology of Cossacks and other Ukrainians, under the tutalege of Gabriel de Mortillet; he received his doctorate from the Sorbonne and was awarded the prestigious Paul Broca medal in paleontology. Still enjoying a reputation among Russian archeologists, especially those who included anthropology in the discipline, Anuchin presented his work at the 11th Congress. Volkov returned to work in St. Petersburg in 1905, and died in 1918, after sending his materials to Kyiv to begin to realize his dream of an independent Ukraine.
Ivan Egorevich’s father died when he was 7, and the impoverished lad later very fortuitously found a job at the Moscow Armoury. Stroev and others there inspited his love for antiquity; he was always engaged in the professioanlization of archeology. His doctorate from St. Vladimir’s is honorary. D. I. Bagalei of Kharkov University named him the founder of “historical archeology.” He designated his daughter Maria and The Historical Museum as his only heirs, to receive his collections.
Ivan’s brother Andrei was a well known painter, and both specialized in their native province of Poltava. An amateur archeologist, Ivan excavated clay pots and other products at the same time that he was helping to revitalize such production in Poltava as the “king of kustar,” or “artisan products.” Involved in multiple aspects of the Poltava local government, he was especially active in ethnographic works and the museums. He arranged the Poltava display at the All-Russian Kustar Exhibition in 1901, and also presented on his archeological finds at regional conferences.
Baron V. G. Tizengauzen, a Baltic German (Ernst Woldemar von Tiesenhausen), became an important Orientalist after years of petty bureaucratic jobs, necessary to earn his living. When the IAK was formed in 1859, he attained a clerkship there, and ultimately elevated himself to Associate Director, through his scholarship. The Commission dispatched him to excavate in New Russia and Crimea; he was also a numismatist. Although a member of IMAO from 1865, he resigned from it in 1889 over a dispute between Uvarova’s Society and Bobrinskii’s Commission over which one enjoyed propriety over the official assignation of permissions to excavate.
Count I. I. Tolstoi, son of the Minister of Posts and Telegraph, would himself become the Minister of Education during the 1905 Revolution; like much else about liberalism in those years, he did not survive the position, but was later elected to the St. Petersburg City Council. A member of the IAK from 1886, he was among those who broke with the IMAO in 1889 in the contest for archeological authority in the empire. A numismatist, he co-edited with Kondakov the commanding five volumes on Russian antiquities. He was also secretary and vice-president of the Academy of Arts, important given the overlap that continued between art and archeology, especially prevalent in Kondakov’s work on iconography.
The “father of Russian archeology,” Alexei Sergeevich was being educated by his father, the Minister of Education and President of the Academy of Sciences, for a diplomatic posting. Scions of the Razumovskii family, a favorite of Tsaritsa Elizabeth I, the Uvarovs had all the necessary social connections. All Alexei needed was one visit to Pompeii, and he switched careers immediately. An avid numismatist, he wanted to collect more artefacts than just the coins. A founding member of the Russian Archeological Association in St. Petersburg, following a break with Sergei Stroganov of the IAK, he moved to Moscow and formed a rival society. It was Uvarov’s Moscow-based Society that organized the 15 successful archeological congresses, the only sustained academic symposia in Imperial Russia.
Appointed to a professorship in the department of political economy and statistics at Kharkov University, Sreznevskii became one of the premier Slavisists in the world. Deeply immersed in the culture of Ukraine, he collected stories, folklore, and traditions throughout the region. Kharkov, though, was not big enough for him, and he transferred to St. Petersburg where he worked at both the university and the Academy of Sciences. He continued his travels throughout the Slavic lands in western Russia and those in the Ottoman Empire. His linguistic work was groundbreaking, but he argued that Ukrainian was a dialect, but although it should be studied, it did not form the basis of a separate culture. One of this three sons, Viacheslav, become one of tsarist Russia’s most important photographers, noted for his technical innovations.
Ignatii Stelletskii, after graduating from the Kiev Spiritual Academy, took a position at the Nazareth teaching seminary in Palestine. From here he made an unconventional jump to the Moscow Archive of the Ministry of Justice, where Samokvasov took him under his mentorship in excavating kurgans. Stelletskii combined the two with a paper on “The Scythian Invasion of Palestine,” read at the 14th Congress. Indeed, Palestine provided his main area of expertise, though he does not appear to have returned. He presented an equally controversial paper at the 15th Congress, on his latest interest, searches for the city’s “underground,” searches that he continued in other cities. During the Great War he found himself on the Caucasian front, from which Marr and Uspenskii and others were conducting excavations; he was appointed director of the archeological department of the governor-generalship of the occupied Ottoman territories. On a side note, Stelletskii became obsessed with the “missing” library of Ivan the Terrible, which he carried over into his Soviet years.