Preliminary Study of the Stone Age in Crimea: Historiographical Insights

Abstract

The article deals with the historiography of the formation of the Crimean archaeology as a component of scientific knowledge of Russia in the last quarter of the 19th century. It is accented that an important role in this process was played by social and economic factors, activated after the reforms of the 1860s and scientific and organizational, in particular the arrival of archeological monuments in the sphere of attention of the most educated part of society (K.S. Merezhkovsky, A.S. Uvarov). Crimean researchers of the Stone Age, focusing on the idea of autochthonous, long-term, successive development of cultures, considered the basis of progress the improvement of technology and tools. Developing evolutionist ideas, scientists formulated the main objectives of archaeological knowledge in the following: to rise to the level of creating a comprehensive doctrine about the evolution of primitive societies, their development and decline, education and transformation. At the same time, the authors did not simply describe and classify archaeological monuments and artifacts in a philosophical-historical context, but sought to analyze them and build their own system of views on the change of eras, cultures and individual stages of the prehistoric past of humanity. At the same time in the last third of the 19th century archaeological study of the Stone Age of Crimea was also manifested in the quantitative accumulation of sources. In particular, the first paleolithic sites were discovered, the antiquity of human existence on the peninsula was proved, the first anthropological remains of the primitive era in Crimea were found, the first generalized classifications of stone age tools and collections of archeological collections were created.