Origins and stages of the formation of a scientific archaeological school in Tomsk

The article deals with the history of the formation and development of a scientific archaeological school at Tomsk State University (TSU). The authors identify the origins and stages of its preparatory period. It was found that the first stage has a chronological framework of 1882-1922; the second one covers the period of 1940-1968. The study revealed that favorable conditions for the formation of a scientific school in archaeology in Tomsk were formed twice, in the early 1920s and late 1940s, but external circumstances hindered this process. It was not until V.I. Matyushchenko graduated from TSU in 1953 when conditions for the creation of a scientific archaeological school emerged again. Matyushchenko became the head of the university's museum of archaeology and ethnography, resumed the activities of the archaeological club, organized field archaeological research, defended his PhD thesis in archaeology, and developed a broad research program to uncover the ancient history of the forest and forest-steppe Ob region. Matyushchenko rallied young researchers around himself acting as the leader of the archaeological team. He was one of the initiators of the creation of the Problem Research Laboratory of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of Siberia (PRL lAES), and suggested holding the West Siberian Archaeological Conferences (WSAC). The heyday of this school fell on the first half of the 1970s. Nevertheless, Matyushchenko was not satisfied with his position and the work of the PRL lAES, and when he was offered to head the Department of Prehistoric Culture at the newly opened university in Omsk, he moved there in 1976. Matyushchenko's student L.A. Chindina was the successor of his ideas in the research on all periods of the ancient unwritten history of the Ob region's population. In 1976, she headed the Archaeology and Ethnography sector of the PRL IAES and proposed her own research programme. In 1986, she defended her doctoral dissertation and headed the student research laboratory (SRL) "Archaeologist". Under the challenging socio-economic conditions of the 1990s, the establishment of the Department of Archaeology and Local History at TSU in 1991 provided the scaffolding for the scientific archeological school under Chindina. This school, which was developing from 1976 to the late 2000s, adopted the main feature of the previous one as it was based on broad interdisciplinary research. Currently, a new archaeological school is being formed under M.P. Chernaya. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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