The Day of Archaeology is celebrated in Russia on August 15th. It is a professional holiday for specialists who carry out excavations and help the world to recreate the image of the past, using the structures and monuments of the ancient world found during expeditions. Professor of the Department of Russian and International History of South Ural State University, Senior Research Fellow at the SUSU Eurasian Studies Research and Education Centre, Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of History and Archaeology of the Ural Division of Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the World Archaeological Congress and European Association of Archaeologists Andrey Epimakhov spoke about the intricacies of the profession of an archaeologist and about how the archaeological expeditions of the students of our university are going.
– Every holiday has its own back story. What is the back story of the Day of Archaeology?
– There are several legends about how this holiday originated, because formally the Day of Archaeology was not celebrated until recent years. One of the versions is that the leading archaeological organization in Leningrad was closed on this day, and Leningrad archaeologists jokingly or sarcastically sent congratulations on the Day of Archaeology to various expeditions. This is how, due to not too cheerful events, a holiday emerged, which was entrenched in the professional environment of archaeologists. There are, however, other versions of the origin, but less serious ones.
– Are there any traditions for celebrating the Day of Archaeology?
– Archaeologists try to spend August 15th in the fields, as they say, on an expedition. They unite, prepare something festive, relax, congratulate each other, but there are no special rituals. However, in addition to exchanging congratulations among themselves, they also congratulate those who are somehow involved in expeditions and excavations, and there are, of course, hundreds of times more such people than professional archaeologists.
– History students are taught at our university. Please tell us how they study archaeology and whether they participate in expeditions?
– The first contact of future historians with archaeology takes place in the summer after the freshman year. Traditionally, this is an expedition. We always take students out, and this is important in many ways. Only Covid times let us down. For many, this is the first and last experience of touching ancient objects, archaeological monuments, that is, this is the only way to find out what they look like. It’s one thing to watch pictures in lectures, and another thing to see it all live, and even participate in the research yourself. And, from my point of view, no less valuable experience in expeditionary activity is that this is the first and last time when the whole group works together in the same place on the same thing. An expedition is such a thing where you cannot hide behind the back of another. Everyone is here, and everyone is responsible for everyone. I think that this is one of the most striking events in the life of historians, which happens during their studies. Our practical training is quite long. At the beginning, it seems to the students that this is terrible, and they will definitely not be able to "survive" to the end, and at the end they are surprised that the practice ended so quickly, and some of them ask to stay and help continue the expedition.
– Are there any important archaeological finds on the account of SUSU archaeologists?
– We have many archaeologists who work at South Ural State University. The university has been cooperating with the Institute of History and Archaeology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences for a very long time, and many scientists work both there and at our university. This symbiosis gave very significant results, including field and analytical discoveries. Archaeology today is not only an expedition. We work in the field for one month a year, well, one and a half, sometimes two months, but the rest of the time is given the process of scientific, technical and analytical processing of the finds. Many of the discoveries are made not in the field. They are made according to the results of field research by analytical methods. To date, our scientists have made a number of field discoveries and replenished the funds of the People and Technologies of the Urals University Museum, where we periodically organize exhibitions with new exhibits. For the last few years I have been doing geoarchaeology. These are geochemical studies of humans and animals carried out to reveal migration and mobility. Migration itself, according to archaeological sources, is an invisible thing. At its core, this is movement, while archaeologists find something that has not been moving anywhere for a long time, so restoring movement is a very difficult task. That is why the methods of paleogenetics, geochemistry, which I do, come to the rescue here, and the largest grants from the Russian Science Foundation have been received for such multidisciplinary research. Thus, there are important discoveries in the field. For example, the study of the burial ground in Kichigino with excellent Sarmatian materials, weapons, animal style and a host of other beauties. But after the excavations, about ten years have passed, and the processing of materials continues, more and more new facets are being discovered. We are trying to consider the diet of the ancient population, to understand where they came from, how their things were made technologically, and so on. The same can be said about the discoveries made at the Uelgi burial ground, which has been studied for many years, and this year our students worked there. This has to do with the origin of the Ugric and modern Hungarians. This is such a crossroads through which Siberian, Eastern European, Southern nomads passed. It is all such a symbiosis, which is very difficult to understand, but colleagues continue not only to dig, but also process materials. We hope that somewhere in the near future we will see fundamental research on this topic.
– What does it mean to be an archaeologist?
– To be an archaeologist is to be open to the new. You need to be prepared for the fact that your conclusions from ten or twenty years ago may be revised. New materials, new methods will lead to the fact that you will be forced, as the ancients said, to “reverse the stylus” and write it all over again. There are few reliable facts that formed the basis, they remain for many decades, but you must be prepared for the fact that your yesterday's thoughts may turn out to be irrelevant tomorrow, because the materials came into conflict with what you did before. And, of course, the archaeologist in today's version should be interested in very different things. This may concern one era that you are working on, but different aspects of it.
– How to get ready for an archaeological expedition?
– To prepare for the expedition is not so difficult as it seems at first glance. You have to be prepared for the fact that you will have to learn absolutely everything. Today we are dealing with a very urbanized people, who most often have never left the city limits for more than a couple of days. And so it turns out that we take students to completely unusual conditions, to live in tents and so on. Under these conditions, they are forced to learn how to live, cook food, and conduct daily normal work activities. All this together can arouse fear, but there is nothing to be afraid of. We will help you learn everything. This applies to both professional skills and household ones. You also need to learn to rely on your comrades, your groupmates. The friendlier the group, the easier it goes through expeditionary practice. Everything else is not so important. Physical conditions are not so important, it is not even so important how brilliantly you have mastered the theoretical material. After all, this is a kind of adventure, and we try to make this adventure not have any sad consequences, but give pleasure. But you need to be prepared for various adversities, such as bad weather. Everything else is technical details that we inform students before leaving. Many years of practice shows that students cope well with all this, some kind of backbone of the team is always formed, they see who can do and what, all of the roles are distributed, and then they work well as a single organism. This is why it is always a pity for them to leave the expedition!