THE BEGINNING OF THE FORMATION OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCE BASE OF THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN OF THE SLAVS (BASED ON THE MATERIALS OF THE ARCHIVE OF V. P. PETROV)

In May 1933, Viktor Platonovych Petrov, Doctor of Philology, became a researcher at the Section of the History of Material Culture (SIMK), which was created as a result of the restructuring of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences ‘in order to combat the dispersion of farmers, workshop isolation, and bureaucratic isolation of a number of institutions related in their profile and tasks.’ The SIMK included: The All-Ukrainian Archaeological Committee, the Cabinet of Anthropology and Ethnology, the Museum of Archaeology, the Ethnological Museum, the Ethnographic Commission, the Middle East Commission, the Department of Prehistory, and the Cabinet of Ukrainian Art. The reason for this unification was the affinity of activities and considerable achievements in the field of archaeology in most of these institutions.

At the time of the creation of SIMK, V. Petrov headed the Ethnographic (Ethnographic and Folklore) Commission of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (after the death of its head, academician A. Loboda, on 1 January 1931). He worked in this Commission from 1920 as a researcher, in 1923 as a secretary, and in 1927 as a director/head.

Organisationally, SIMK was structured on the basis of socio-economic formations: the sector of primitive communist formation, the sector of slave society, and the sector of feudal society. The SIMK did not last long, and by the resolution of the Presidium of the All-Union Academy of Sciences of 13 February 1934, the Institute of the History of Material Culture (IIMK) was established on its basis.

At the IIMK (whose structure changed annually) V.P. Petrov held the position of senior researcher. His publications show that during 1934-1937 Viktor Platonovych studied historical and ethnographic problems: ‘From the History of Housing in Ukraine’ (1934); ’Slash-and-burn Agriculture in Eastern Europe. To the Problem of Pre-Class Society’ (1934); ’Fr. Engels on the Family System of the Germanic peoples’ (1935); ’Engels on the Family System of the Germanic peoples. To the question of land relations among the Germanic peoples’ (1936); “Language and the history of material culture (To the question of semantic relations in the language of tribal society)” (1937).

The Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR decided to reorganise the SIMK into the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR by a resolution of 14 May 1938, where V. Petrov was appointed as a head of the pre-feudal and feudal periods sector.

At the end of the 1930s, one of the main problems of archaeological science in Ukraine was the problem of the origin and early history of the Slavs, and special attention was paid to the study of ‘The urnfields culture’. The term ‘fields of funeral urns’ or ‘burial fields’ in the national archaeological literature of that time referred to a certain group of monuments in the form of burial grounds without ground features, which were first discovered by V. V. Khvoyka in the villages of Zarubyntsi and Cherniakhiv. It was with the culture of ‘urnfields’ that the oldest early Slavic antiquities of the first half of the first millennium AD, which preceded the Slavic monuments of the pre-state period, were identified. Subsequently, this term was transformed into ‘The urnfields culture’ of the Zarubynets and Cherniakhiv types, and in the mid-1950s into the Zarubynets and Cherniakhiv cultures.

In addition to Khvoyka’s research in Zarubyntsi (1899), Romashky (1899, 1901), and Cherniakhiv (1900), which formed the basis of the collection at the Central Historical Museum (now the National Museum of History of Ukraine), materials from the culture of the ‘urnfields’ were obtained by Y. Yarotskyi’s excavations near the village of Lepesivka (1908) and by M. Yakymovych’s exploration near Zalissia (1896). In 1898-1899 and 1903, Professor K. Hadachek of Lviv University conducted research on a settlement of the first centuries CE in Neslukhiv and in 1909 on a grave field in Psary in the upper Podnistrovia. At the same time, M. Ebert’s work on the cemetery in Mykolaivka (Kozatska) on the lower Dnipro near Kherson (1909).

In the 1920s, the cultural collections of the ‘burial fields’ were enriched by accidental finds and, mainly, by the work of museums. In 1929, the Bila Tserkva Museum excavated a cemetery in the village of Romashky (S. Drozdov) and a cemetery and settlement in the village of Didivshchyna in the Kyiv region (V. Kozlovska). In the Mykolaiv region, A. Dobrovolskyi in 1924 investigated the settlement in the village of Otbido-Vasylivka. In the Cherkasy region, the Maslovsky grave field was investigated (1926 – P. I. Smolichev; 1928, 1929 – S. S. Hamchenko, M. L. Makarevych). On the left coast of Dnipro river, the most significant excavations were those of the Kantemyrivskyi cemetery by M. Rudynskyi (1924) and the Gurbynetskyi cemetery by M. Makarenko (1926). Near the village of Pryvilne in Naddorizhzhia, excavations were carried out in 1929 at a settlement (V. A. Hrinchenko) and a cemetery (P. A. Kozar).

The Institute of Archaeology began to systematically and methodically investigate the cultural monuments of the ‘urnfields’. In 1939 and 1940, excavations of the Chernyakhivska culture settlement in Mykilske village were carried out (A. Bodianskyi, I. Feshchenko). In 1940, M. L. Makarevych and E. V. Makhno investigated the settlement in Zhukivtsi, I. M. Feshchenko continued the excavations of the settlement in the village of Pryvilne, and I. M. Samoilovsky conducted a study of the Korchuvate grave field, the second burial site after Zarubyntsi at the turn of the era.

Realising that scientific research should be preceded by the creation of a source bank, V. Petrov, as a head of the pre-feudal and feudal periods sector of the Institute of Archaeology, initiated and organised the preparation of a series of collective works (‘corpus of archaeological monuments’) dedicated to ‘The urnfield culture’ monuments. The corpus had the general title “Monuments of ‘The urnfields culture’ of the last centuries BC and the first centuries AD on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR”. The first volume of this edition was devoted to the publication of cultural monuments from the collections of the Central Historical Museum in Kyiv. Subsequent volumes were to contain publications from the collections of Cherkasy, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, and other museums that held cultural materials from the ‘urnfields’. It was also planned to prepare a map of the distribution of ‘The urnfields culture’ monuments. In addition to the staff of the Institute of Archaeology, museum staff were also involved in this work.

Before the war, the first volume of “Monuments of ‘the urnfield culture’ of the Last Centuries BC and First Centuries AD in the Ukrainian SSR from the Collections of the Central Historical Museum in Kyiv” was compiled and preliminarily edited. Some of its chapters were devoted to the Cherniakhivskyi cemetery (S. Korshenko), excavations near the village of Didivshchyna (V. Kozlovska), and the Korchuvate cemetery (I. Samoilovsky). V. P. Petrov was the author of a large introductory article and chapters devoted to individual sites, including the Zarubyntsi grave field, and to individual items (mostly accidental finds) from the collection of the Central Historical Museum.

S. Korshenko, head of the Department of Scythia and Ancient cities of the Central Historical Museum, submitted a manuscript of the chapter ‘Cherniakhivskyi grave field’ with tables in 1941. He also mapped cultural monuments of ‘urnfields’ whose materials were stored in the museum, as well as individual finds from the whole of Ukraine. The director of the Archaeological Museum of Kharkiv University, I. Lutskevych, mapped such sites in the Kharkiv and partially Poltava regions. In total, more than 200 locations of monuments of ‘The urnfields culture’ were recorded, spreading throughout Ukraine, concentrated mainly in the forest-steppe zone.

The war prevented the publication of this corpus of sources. The achievements of the collective work, organised and led by V. P. Petrov, became the basis for articles on the antiquities of the first millennium AD, published in the postwar years in the collections “Archeology” and the series “Materials and Research on the Archeology of the USSR”(No. 70, 82, 108, 116).

After returning to work at the Institute of Archaeology after the war, V. Petrov continued to study the monuments of the first millennium AD, which formed the source base for the study of the origin of the Slavs, until the end of his life.

The scientific archive of the Institute of Archeology of the NASU in the collection of V. P. Petrov (F. 16) contains a file No. 33, which consists of a manuscript of the text (typewritten with author’s editing) prepared by the scientist for the first volume of the corpus of monuments of the ‘The urnfields culture’. This manuscript consists of an introductory article and a section on ‘Individual items and objects from the collections’. The file also contains the text ‘From the Editors’ (autograph of V. Petrov and typewritten); the table of contents of the first volume (typewritten with edits by V. Petrov), which lists the authors of the chapters; lists of tables (autograph of V. Petrov) and some tables of illustrations.

A large introductory article (174 pages) is devoted to the characterisation of ‘The urnfield culture’. It consists of 8 chapters (titles are given in the original):

I. To the question of the quantitative spread of ‘The urnfield’ culture on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.
II. Typological Definition of ‘The urnfield culture’ of the First Century CE.
III. On the question of chronological dating of the grave fields of ‘The urnfield’ culture in the Upper Dnipro region.
IV. To the question of the territorial and geographical spread of ‘The urnfield’ culture.
V. Towards a reconsideration of the question of ‘Roman influences’ in ‘The urnfield’ culture of the first centuries AD
VI. To the problem of studying of ‘The urnfields’ culture of the last centuries BC on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR with ceramics of the ‘Zarubyntsi’ type and Latenian fibulas.
VII. ‘The Gothic problem’.
VIII. On the relation of ‘The urnfield’ culture of the first centuries CE to the Early Slavic culture of the second half of the first millennium CE.
It is possible that these texts were completed by V.P. Petrov in 1940, because in 1941 Viktor Platonovych moved to work at the Institute of Ukrainian Folklore of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (established in 1936), where he worked as a senior researcher and head of the ethnography department from 1937. In April 1941, V. Petrov was appointed director of the Institute of Ukrainian Folklore.

The monuments of ‘The urnfield’ culture are also related to File No. 34 (F. 16). It contains the manuscript ‘The Culture of “Urnfields” on the Territory of the Ukrainian SSR in the First Centuries AD’ (30 pages, typewritten with editing by V. Petrov). This is probably the first, short version of the introductory article to the first volume of the corpus of ‘The urnfield’ culture monuments. The file also contains a copy of Section VI from the introductory article by V. Petrov to the first volume ‘To the Problem of Studying the Culture of the “Urnfields” of the Last Centuries BC in the Ukrainian SSR with Zarubyntsi Ceramics and Latenian Fibulas’.

The archive of V.P. Petrov (F. 16) contains glass negatives with materials from ‘The urnfield’ culture from the Central Historical Museum. Worth to mention that some of these materials were lost during the war.

The majority of files from the archive of V. Petrov (F. 16) related to antiquities of the first millennium AD belong to the research and publications of the scientist in the 1950s and 1960s.

Files No 105, 127, 128, 131, 133, 137, 144, 146, 147, 157, 161, 179.

Natalia Abashyna and Oleh Petrauskas