Premiers pas des archéologues russes et français dans le Turkestan russe (1870-1890) [Méthodes de recherche et destin des collections

Abstract

Svetlana Goršenina. Russian and French archeologists' first steps in Russian Turkestan, 1870- 1890. This article presents the pioneers of archeological research in Russian Turkestan between the years 1870 and 1890 - among others, Borzenkov, Krestovskii, Veselovskii, Chaffanjon - before the more systematic era ushered in by the foundation in 1896 of the Turkestani Circle of Archeology Lovers and the appearance of Viatkin and Barthold. The key site was already Afrasiab, the site of pre-Mongolian Samarkand. Cursory digging went hand in hand with systematic collecting of antiquities picked up on the site and in local bazaars. The military encouraged the research out of interest for the region's past. The French archeologist Jean Chaffanjon's mission (1894-1895) must be reconsidered in this perspective. This archeologist was put at the center of a somber legend in Soviet historiography. He does not differ much from the other pioneers, whether by his lack of real digging methods or by his acquisition of a private collection (that of Barshchevskii - part of this collection constitutes the core of the Samarkand Museum). New research by the author of this article, conducted mainly in French archives, allows one to put the final touch on the rich portrait of this explorer with numerous interests, to understand his motivations and find out where his financial support came from, and finally, to assess his field work (which, in Central Asia, spread from Merv to Semirech'e).