Excavating Empire: Russian Archeology in the Nineteenth Century

This book tells the story of imperial Russia's archeologists, the pioneering generations of men and women who took their trowels to the burial tumuli, Russia's kurgans, and went digging to unearth a tangible, identifiable past.Determined to establish professional standards, they were producing a new kind of knowledge, one with the potential to furnish insights necessary for an objective evaluation of their collective past.If these ambitious would-be scientists came up short on their ideals of objectivity, they succeeded admirably in inserting their endeavors into all the key issues that Russians were grappling with throughout their long 19th century.This happened because archeological artefacts have forever hinted at promises that they have never been able to keep.Their very materiality imbues those who discover them with the optimism that the past can be faithfully recreated from the bones of ancestors lying among the shards of ceramics and bits of tools and utensils that they had mad