Роль и место иркутской школы археологии в спасательных раскопках в зоне затопления Богучанской ГЭС

Abstract

The article presents a historical and historiographic excursion into long-term archaeological research of Irkutsk archaeologists, paleoanthropologists and geomorphologists in the Northern Angara region – in its part, now hidden by the reservoir of the Boguchany hydroelectric power station on the Angara River. For thousands of years, the Angara River has been the geographical core of Baikal-Yenisei Siberia – its archaeological and paleoethnic cultures, individual peoples and the modern multi-ethnic population of a vast and historically significant region. Research into the antiquities of the Angara region has been going on for almost a century and a half. They began with the historical trip of Nikolai Vitkovski and developed in the works of Bernhard Petri. The modern Irkutsk school of archeology, created by Professor German Medvedev as a continuation of more than a century of research traditions of the Irkutsk University, devoted great attention to the study of this unique historical and geographical phenomenon. Of course, the successful work of the Boguchany archaeological expedition would not have become possible without accumulating and taking into account the entire experience of field work on the Angara River, archaeological exploration and excavations carried out for decades by Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk archaeologists. It is noted that numerous, often different-time and multilayered archaeological sites (monuments) (more than two hundred) have become not only vivid evidence of the culture of bygone centuries, but also, thanks to the multidisciplinarity of field and laboratory research, a scientific phenomenon that laid the foundations for future knowledge. It is concluded that it was the Irkutsk school of archaeology with its enviable attention to stratigraphy and decades of experience in penetrating the essence of things that became the cornerstone of the success of the entire Boguchany archaeological expedition. This publication is devoted to considering the results of this, in every sense, wonderful project, which was clearly manifested in one of the largest archaeological projects in post-Soviet Russia.