Изучение палеолита в России: прошлое, настоящее и перспективы на будущее
Palaeolithic Studies in Russia: Retrospect and Prospects

Summary/Abstract: The last decades have seen the growth of interest to the history of archaeological thought as a consequence of theoretical concepts. It has been widely admitted that the Russian school of prehistoric archaeology occupies a special place among main national archaeological communities of the world. Soviet archaeology, cut off for decades by the language barrier exacerbated by the specific character of its premises and goals, has its own history. This has to be borne in mind as we try to analyze contemporary debates. Our literature lacks a study of this kind. The main aim of the monograph is thus to fill these gaps in literature, presenting a review of the history and current Russian Paleolithic studies. A new openness of Russia has given the unique chance to discuss frankly all aspects including those theoretical underpinnings, which were passed over in silence in the very recent past. The monograph is devoted to a brief developmental history of main theoretical and methodological approaches pioneered in Russia during the last 130 years. Their advancement and decline were shaped both by the external (ideological and sociocultural) forces and the internal logic of archaeological inquiry. A special attention is paid to the comparative study of concepts prevailed in Russian and Western archaeology on each stage of their historical development. Many of the intriguing coincidences in the Western and Eastern schools of prehistory clearly reflect the implicit patterns in the growth of archaeology. The monograph deals also with the contemporary state of Russian Paleolithic archaeology focusing on some pivotal issues provoking hot debates namely the problems of typological vs. technological analysis of lithics, definition and interpretation of spatio-temporal culture configurations, subsistence and settlement studies. The activity of Russian prehistorians is regarded as integral part of global archaeological community; thus some current trends in worldwide prehistory are discussed. All chapters of the first part of the monograph are written in similar manner. After brief characteristics of organizational structure, major field discoveries and publications appeared within the time span considered, multidisciplinary environmental studies are examined. Interchanges with Western scholars are described. After it main methodological issues of Paleolithic archaeology are discussed – from the development of field techniques to the study of habitat structures and prehistoric settlement patterns, economy, lifeways and social structure of Early Man communities. Then problems of lithic classification and taxonomy, identification of culture entities are discussed followed by more general problems of the analysis of Paleolithic culture patterns in global scale. The problem of the interpretation of the Pleistocene art and rituals is considered as a separate topic. An evaluation of theoretical underpinnings, discussions around basic aims and goals of prehistoric research are given. In conclusion one can find general characteristics of the period of the development of Paleolithic research in Russia against the background of biases prevailed in worldwide prehistory. Chapter 1 (“Early Research: pre-1917”) deals with the first stage of the development of prehistory in Russia in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. The dawn of Stone Age studies in Russia like in other European countries was associated with the antiquarianism – collection of stone tools by amateurs interested in remote past. Originated in the late 19th century within the framework of the evolutionary concept, Russian Paleolithic archaeology passed in this time span a formative phase (collection of evidence, development of field methods and typological glossary, first attempts to summarize scanty data at hand). The 1920s were probably the most interesting period, when Russian prehistory achieved a maturity (Chapter 2: “Preliminary to Change: the 1920s”). In this time several provocative lines of inquiry in field methods (spatial distribution of artifacts, a discovery of domestic structures at open-air sites), lithic analysis (technological approach, statistical classification) and the interpretation of archaeological record (identification of local cultures in the Upper Paleolithic) were put forward. The paleoethnological school (similar to the American anthropological approach) dominated in Russian prehistory. An official version of the history of archaeology in the Soviet Union tended to overestimate the impact of the adoption of Marxism in the early 1930s, thus passing over in silence the achievements of previous period. It should be added that leading scholars of the 1920s (Bonch-Osmolovsky, Rudinsky, Petrie) later suffered from the repression and their activity rests far from being analyzed in the literature. It is worth noting that many ideas put forward in this period foreshadowed the archaeological views, which were to appear in the West in the 1960s with the advent of the “New Archaeology” and the settlement archaeology. Chapter 3 (“The Rise and Fall of the Stadial Concept”) deals with the history of the formation of the so-called “Soviet Archaeology” of the 1930-50s. This most dramatic and contradictory period in the history of Russian archaeology witnessed a radical shift of research interests to the problems of the study of Paleolithic dwelling structures and habitation sites associated with the introduction of large-scale horizontal exposures of living floors, functional interpretation of lithics (Semenov’s method of use-wear studies), and the stadial approach to the generalization of Paleolithic culture patterns. This transition from a “normal” science of the 1920s was heavily influenced by a number of external (introduction of Marxist concepts, Marr’s Theory of Stages) and internal (dissatisfaction of the new generation of scholars by the narrow limits of taxonomy and culture history, tendency toward the reconstruction of social systems of the past) factors. It should be stressed that the focus on problems of culture change in socioeconomic terms was advanced by Soviet archaeologists (Efimenko, Boriskovsky) as early as in the 1930s. In the same time other important issues (man-land relationships, environmental studies) were regarded as not germane to the Soviet archaeology interests and objectives. Other remarkable achievement of this period was Zamiatnin’s concept of greatest culture areas of the Upper Paleolithic. Chapter 4 (“From Center to Periphery: a Regional Diversification”) constitutes a transition from the historical part of the book to the analysis of current situation. I adopted the early 1960s as a starting point due to the fact that this period witnessed the beginning of the formation of contemporary structure of prehistoric research in Russia, the appearance of a broad network of regional research centers on the place of former centralized archaeological apparatus. Major research institutions, their field and publishing activities are characterized as well as some current problems in pursuing field and laboratory research, introduction of new techniques, archaeological resource management and site protection, international exchanges, etc. The last decade has been witnessing a diversification of approaches and gradual convergence with the Western archaeology. Chapter 5 (“Subsistence and settlement studies”) deals with the issues of the reconstruction of prehistoric sites, ecology and economy. Contributions devoted to the analysis of ecological settings of habitations, site catchment analysis, archaeozoology and other related issues are few in Russia. Meanwhile certain achievements in the geoarchaeological study of culture-bearing strata, refitting studies and spatial analysis of living floors (Leonova, Medvedev, Nesmeianov, etc.) deserve a mention. This issue appears to be the weak spot in contemporary Russian archaeology and there are much more work to be done in this direction in the future. Chapter 6 (“Lithic Typology and Technology: From the Bordes’ Method to “Chaоne Opйratoire”) is devoted to the problems of lithic analysis. The 1960s witnessed the adoption of statistical Bordesian typology. Meanwhile Korobkov and Sinitsyn advocated systems of lithic analysis alternative to Bordes’ and essentially based on the identification of morphological elements of lithics, instead of a tool taken as a whole. The same years saw a growing interest to statistical classification and taxonomy (Grigor’ev, Gvozdover, Medvedev). The majority of debates were concentrated on the so-called “Levallois Problem” and core classification. Later dynamic models oriented toward a study of the technology of stone knapping and tools manufacture, as well as reduction sequences challenged this static view on lithic analysis. In this chapter a cursory look on the use-wear and replication studies is given too. Chapter 7 (“Stadial vs. Local Culture Approaches: a Hot Debate”) deals with fierce debates in Soviet archaeology of the 1950-60s when the stadial concept was strongly challenged by the local culture approach pioneered by Rogachev. This focus on identifying different archaeological cultures, eliciting their genetic ties to cultures that existed before and after them, came to dominate in Russia in the 1960-80s. The unwarranted emphasize on purely local peculiarities of the Paleolithic within the micro-areas studied led to the consequent narrowing of the field of research for scholars. An endless mosaic of small regional configurations replaced a coherent picture of cultural development. Last years have seen a growing tendency toward more behavioral models explaining the variability in artifact assemblages. The latter should take into account the role of those factors as raw material availability, technological processes in work, functional variability, etc. Chapter 8 (“Beyond Local Cultures: High-Level Archaeological Entities”) deals with problems of elaboration of ‘periodization’ vehicles and global-scale comparative analysis of culture development. In the 1960-80s the original provocative concept of the “Post-Mousterian”, i.e. the survival of Middle Paleolithic culture elements in Final Pleistocene industries beyond Europe and Near East, coined by Grigor’ev, provided the central focus of the discussion. Various terms were also coined by Grigor’ev, Liubin, Gladilin and others for definition of broad culture units. Chronological segmenting of evidence, the definition of Paleolithic periods raised heated debate. “Summary and Conclusions” contains a brief overview of preceding chapters. It will allow tracing main periods of the development of the Russian archaeology in the context of world prehistory. The similarities as well as the differences between main national schools of prehistoric research are pointed out. In spite of the appearance of some intriguing lines of inquiry in recent years, Russian prehistorians in general tend towards the ‘mainstream’ culture-historical archaeology with some reservations and modifications. Meanwhile Russian school of prehistory has clearly achieved a good deal, especially in wide-scale comparative studies of Paleolithic cultures. Taking into account as it does the high-quality data produced by leading academic research centers, it makes our contributions useful for wide circles of prehistorians, especially for those who tend to see our domain in a broad anthropological perspective.

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