The Ethnoarchaeology of Russians in the Syro-Palestinian Region (18th–19th Centuries)

L A Belyaev,Y Tchekhanovets

doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2020.48.2.097-105

Abstract

This study belongs to a new archaeological subdiscipline in Russian and Israeli research—the archaeology of Russian presence, addressing cultural, ethnic, and geopolitical contacts between the Russian Empire and the Near Eastern, speciﬁcally Syro-Palestinian, population in the mid-19th to early 20th centuries. This was the time when a new sociocultural entity emerged, known as Russian Palestine. Many thousands of Orthodox Christians from Russia (including Siberia) traveled to the Holy Land each year. A prolonged Russian residence in the Ottoman part of Palestine, where Russia owned dozens of estates, had a profound impact on Palestinian culture. Important evidence thereof are archaeological sites relating to Russian estates and pilgrimage centers. This article provides information on newly discovered Russian estates in 19th century Jerusalem, remains of buildings with their infrastructure at the Russian and Benjamin’s estates, and the Russian Compound outside the Jaffa Gate. Evidence of the Russian presence include numerous 18th–19th century lapidary inscriptions, utensils left by the ﬁrst Russian missionaries, small cemeteries, and separate burials (some of them very interesting, such as the burial of a Russian pilgrim at Aceldama, Jerusalem). One ﬁnd is unusual—a family synodikon from Aceldama, printed in Moscow. Among the inscriptions are professional ones, made in the monumental style, and usual prayer grafﬁti. One inscription has allowed us to determine the date of the pilgrimage to Constantinople and Palestine by the Chernigov monks, described by Sylvester (Dikansky).

Highlights

The archaeology of temporal presenceThe study of interaction between different cultures has a separate field that is not always taken into consideration while analyzing cross-cultural relations on the basis of archaeological evidence
They are supplemented by the situation became clear: archaeologists accidentally widespread evidence of primarily epigraphic nature: discovered one of the Russian possessions in Jerusalem inscriptions of pilgrims, sometimes very special and in the 19th century, identifying the name used at that unique, made in the monumental style, and ordinary graffiti time: the Homsi land plot at the New Gate (3436 m2), on with prayers, which were left by almost every pilgrim
The question of the Russian presence in Palestine has been actively studied since the last quarter of the 20th century, but never from the perspective of “dialogue of cultures”, which can be detected by nothing other than archaeology of the late period

Summary

Introduction

The archaeology of temporal presenceThe study of interaction between different cultures has a separate field that is not always taken into consideration while analyzing cross-cultural relations on the basis of archaeological evidence. The site of the Russian Compound were discovered by Archival research has revealed a three-story building of the excavations of 2015–2017 (Tchekhanovets, Arviv, distinctive architecture on the photographs of the early 20th Vach, in press); more limited evidence was found at the century.

Results

Conclusion