Historical Archaeology in Russia: New Directions of Research

This article represents a survey of modern trends for development and possible strategies of Historical archaeology which arose in Russia at the end of the 20th century. In Russia the period of Historical archaeology embraces the main part of Great Moscow principality of the 14th -15th centuries, then the Moscow Tzardom and the early Russian Empire up to the early 19th century and even later. The history of Russia as a state numbers not more than one thousand years. So the archaeology of the Modern period represents its biggest part. It is also very important to self-identification because it includes in fact all the period of national history (almost from the Mongol invasion till the Revolution of 1917, about 800 years) and illuminates all the key moments of the general national narrative. After all this period, especially the 16-18th centuries, offers a lot of various materials: remains of towns, fortresses, churches, cemeteries, workshops, early industrial enterprises, battle fields and other landscape elements. They also contain a mass of artifacts. It is obvious that the main problem of forming the historical archaeology is not the lack of material. Every year it is so numerous that only the reports compose thousands of volumes. The problem is the methods for analyzing these materials, at least their primary interpretation and conversion into the base suitable for new historical conclusions. An excess of information makes a modern researcher (dealing with late archaeology) think by limited contexts, that is by explored object, at best, by explored zones. If a researcher deals with old cities such as Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Kazan and some towns beyond the Ural (Tobolsk, Tomsk etc.) or some deserted Russian settlements in the far North, for example, fortified settlements in Siberia, the informatics field is vast enough. However this approach does not encourage a comparative analyses. The later can be applied mainly if you deal with some special objects, typical for Moscow region. Among them there are tiles (stove and architectural) and complexes connected with burial ceremony. Among them there are surface gravestones, underground con- structions for remains(lime stone sarcophagus shaped as human body and individual brick vaults for one coffin), clothes and shoes, as well as religious items, first of all pectoral crosses and goblets for mixture of oil and wine designed to sprinkle the earthly remains. Studying these wide spread artifacts enables us to reveal a process of penetration in Moscow region of technological, artistic and stylistic elements of Western Christian culture, mainly due to relations with Italy at the end of 15-16th centuries and later through the territory of Great Lithuanian principality, Poland, Baltic Crusader Orders, Holland and in the 18-19th centuries from almost all European countries. It is also important to reconstruct the process of assimilation of these elements and direction of their travel through Russia, opening of local production on their base and a new travel to remote territories.

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