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 Excavating the Wall between East and West: Collaboration in Theory and Methodology Amon g Western and Russian Archaeology European University at St. Petersburg IMARES Phillip A. Mendenhall December 2010 Written under advisory of Dr. Marina Mogilner * and the review of Dr. Sergei Erofeev ** . Key Words : Russian and American methodology, collaboration, archaeology , anthropology , Paleolithic, PaleoIndian * Editor of  AB IMPERIO an affiliated journal of the American Association of Slavic Studies, and associate professor of the European University at St. Petersburg, P.O. Box 157, Kazan, 420015, Russia, [email protected]. ** Director of the IMARES Program at the European University at St. Petersburg, [email protected].

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Excavating the Wall between East and West:

Collaboration in Theory and Methodology Among

Western and Russian Archaeology 

European University at St. Petersburg

IMARES

Phillip A. Mendenhall

December 2010

Written under advisory of Dr. Marina Mogilner * and the review of Dr. Sergei Erofeev**.

Key Words : Russian and American methodology, collaboration, archaeology,anthropology, Paleolithic, PaleoIndian

*Editor of  AB IMPERIO an affiliated journal of the American Association of Slavic Studies, and associate professor 

of the European University at St. Petersburg, P.O. Box 157, Kazan, 420015, Russia, [email protected].**

Director of the IMARES Program at the European University at St. Petersburg, [email protected].

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Table of Contents 

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………3

The Soviet Period: Fieldwork along the Wall……………………………………………….....4

Contemporary Methodology: a migration of theory……..……. ……………………………14

A Survey of Current Collaboration…………………………………………………………...22

Working without Collaboration: The PaleoIndian/Paleolithic Divide……………………...44

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………47

Figures…………………………………………………………………………………………...50

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………..57

Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………….58

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Introduction

Collaboration and the conscious recognition of work across political and personal

 boundaries are essential components for a complete understanding in any field of science.

Archeology is especially reliant on the work of others, as unlike other scientific pursuits,

fieldwork is not repeatable. Likewise it is necessary for collaboration to exist on a personal level

 between colleagues in this field not only to enhance their own personal study, but to build thegeneral level of understanding in a particular focus of this discipline. Exchange networks are as a

result, highly developed from the most basic of regional studies to the international level of 

general theory. However, several key areas of international interest, such as migration, lack the

essential requisite stated above.

Collaboration as a topic in archaeological thought has only been lightly touched upon as

such when it is made in reference to the theory of  New Archaeology which calls for a greater 

collaboration between the major fields of science (Ellis: 2000: 104, Johnson: 2010: 153, Trigger:

2006: 157), but as a topic between archaeological communities it has not received the same

attention. At the same time recent works dedicated to the greater theories of global archaeology

such as; Global archaeological theory: contextual voices and contemporary thoughts whileusing it in the actual examination of methodology fail to mention its condition as an actual point

of debate.

With this in mind, a very interesting and often misunderstood case in connection to the

needs of both collaboration and recognition is the relationship between US and Russian/Soviet

archaeological interests. In general, these geographical areas share little in relation to each other 

concerning their perspective chronology in most of the historical period1. On the other hand, the

early prehistoric period of the Paleolithic connects these major regions across a large timescale

from the late Pleistocene to the Holocene as it is mostly understood (Dolitsky: 1985).It is

recognized that despite the almost necessary need for connection, political, linguistic and other 

 barriers have prevented a more comprehensive exchange between these two conditional subjects.

Yet, and as this text hopes to demonstrate, collaboration was in-fact present throughout the

greater portion of this last century behind the Iron Curtain and that the volume of work that is

relative to these subjects has been both misunderstood and underestimated in quality. Thus, the

following argument will attempt to elaborate on these interrelated topics through two major 

channels.

The initial section will provide a chronological account of actual collaborative events in

archaeological research as well as a more in-depth discussion of the degree of fieldwork in the

Soviet Union to stress that not only are the works that have been made available are

misunderstood, but the history of these events are perhaps also not as well known. As a study of humanity archaeology is often interconnected to other fields in the social sciences such as

anthropology, and while not the major focus of this text, on occasion it has been used in

comparison to demonstrate the relative level of censorship within the former Soviet system, as

well as another case-file of presented collaboration. In addition, the greater political and

methodological differences of this period have been discussed at length and will only be

highlighted in relation to the condition of collaboration and its effect on the exchange of 

information.

Succeeding these chronological events is a brief section emphasizing the effect in the

 build-up of these prior events in relation to the need for compatible methodology of archaeology

1The only major exception is the Russian Colonial Period in Alaska and in the Northwestern continental United

States. Minor areas of cross-cultural exchange are also evident in the various Whaling and Naval stations located in

other areas of the Pacific such as the Russian whaling fort in Hawai’i.

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and exchange at the end of the Soviet Period through the first decade of the Russian Federation.

While it is not possible to describe all the possible differences, it is hoped that a case can again

 be made by discussing the aspects of the Paleolithic migrational theory in greater detail. This

 particular case is seen as the best example for a number of reasons. Firstly, the

Paleolithic/Paleoindian migration to the New World from Siberia and the Russian Far East is

materially relevant to both regions. Secondly, at the time of Russia’s greater political transition,

another transition was also taking place between the greater methodological approaches of theUS and Western Europe. Thus, Russia found itself in the middle of a theorhetorical war that was

well under way between these existing schools of thought and its position either on one side or 

another would have a dramatic change in the way that this prehistorical event was to be

constructed.

Once this position has been established, current examples of collaboration in both

methodology and actual fieldwork will be discussed to complete the current condition of this

relationship. Two major historical as well as political archaeological excavations will be

evaluated to assess the level of collaboration that has developed after the more turbulent decade

of the 1990s. The examples will be further evaluated by expert interviews in relation to the topics

discussed in this paper. Dr. Sergey Vasil’ev will provide insight into the Paleolithic debatedescribed above and Dr. Sergej Uschakow, a director at one of the excavations used as a case

study of modern collaboration, will shed light on the degree of success of collaborative efforts in

the current era. And Mary Prasciunas from the Paleoindian Database of the Americas will

discuss the lack of collaboration in print in the US. Finally four academic journals (two from

either country) will be used in as a quantitative sample to assess the actual inclusion of 

collaboration in print.

The final specialist interviewed and the following journal review will briefly bring to

light the fact that although information and collaboration have been made available, they are not

always used. While it may seem un-burdensome to some not to mention relevant data from all

aspects of the subject in a discussion of a theory, such as Russian sources of the migrational

theory to the New World discussed above; it is in good hope that a brief look at the lack of 

collaboration in some recent works, in relation to other works that have collaborated, will

highlight the danger of doing such where the history of humanity is concerned. This is by no

means a blanketed condemnation, in that region studies and site descriptions are not to feel

 burdened by the prerequisite of international collaboration that this text states as a requirement,

due primarily to their micro-focus of a particular site or artifact; rather it is those that attempt to

describe the greater-event that is the subject of this study.

Thus the greater meaning of this work is to bring to light the fact that despite being a

messenger of human history, archaeology is not free from the fog that the past creates.Archaeologists must be made aware of their own positions in the past and to try to avoid the

habit of exclusion. By touching upon the history of collaboration in the Soviet Period and

following it though with case examples from the conditions and results of the present, it is hoped

that the true condition of these past and present studies will be more widely understood to

encourage its further development and review, as well as to understand its need to make work 

more complete in the future.

The Soviet Period: Collaboration and recognition in retrospective

To gain a better insight into the condition of collaboration that has developed today it isnecessary to understand the history of the discipline in its comparative relationship with the

West. Like every school of thought, current theories and interpretations are developed from those

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that developed before it and many of the scholars and heads of departments that are practicing

today received their education under the former regime’s philosophy and while most have

developed their own methodologies since then, it is important not to forget the foundations on

which they have developed.

It is also important to keep in mind when reviewing the history of Soviet/Russian

archaeology that from the very beginning there has been a difficult road that Soviet archaeology,as well as anthropology, has had to traverse. This is seen in both the abrupt disruptions in its

methodology and in the greater political history of the USSR. In its roughly 74-year history, nine

of those years have been during war time and thirty have been under some form of general

isolation from the Western world. Concerning the work conducted during wartime Bulkin writes

that at the same time that Leningrad was under siege; “the academician Zhebelev died from

hunger, as did G. V. Podgayetskiy (one of the authors of the well-known Clan Society of the

Eastern European Steppes) and his [co-author] fell in action” (Bulkin: 1982: 291). After the war,

returning archaeologists to the field was not a high priority for the recovering Soviet Union. Yet,

it is also important to remember that archaeologists and anthropologists of this time were not

ones to allow the greater strife of the world to hinder their work and with in two years fieldwork 

had resumed in both the European and Asian regions of the Soviet Union (Bulkin: 1982: 292).

Beyond these conditions, Soviet archaeological fieldwork took on the tasks of not only

uncovering the past and understanding the vast diversity of inhabitants within its realm, but also

under the latter regimes it was charged with the task of rephrasing the concepts and uses of 

ethnicity and history to match a new rhetoric. With the immense amount of data that was

collected from this period becoming more accessible, it will also become more apparent that the

discipline was not infertile nor was it completely exclusive to those beyond its frontiers.

The Early Soviet Period

While interest in the shared pan-Paleolithic period in Russia began as early as the late

19th Century1 and excavations began much earlier with D.G Messerschmidt’s first excavations in

Siberia in the 1720s, the focus of collaboration will begin with the end of the Tsarist and Early

Soviet Period. Early collaborative projects at this time can be seen in a series of independent

 projects beginning a half-century earlier with William H. Dall, director of the Scientific Corps of 

the Western Union Telegraph Expedition of 1865- 67 who conducted excavations based on

stratigraphy and evolutionary theory as well as inducing the correct rout of  the Aleut migration

(from coastal Alaska, not Siberia) and publishing traditional Aleut legends2. And Dr. Waldemar 

Jochelson, and his wife, Dr. Dina Brodsky, conducted a variety of ethnographic and early

osteological projects in the Aleutians in 1909/10, which relied heavily upon the works of Russianacademics such as Veniaminov (Jochelson: 1933).

The Jesup North Pacific expedition of 1897-1902 which was led by Morris Jesup of the

American Museum of Natural History and directed by Franz Boas deserves special attention due

to the number of Russian and American researchers working together. The expedition published

12 volumes of ethnographic data over a 30-year period and remained an influential work until

the present day. In the first report from this expedition Boas touches upon the very problem of 

collaboration and the results that it produced when he says; “among the great problems of 

anthropology the one which stands out as of particular interest and importance to the American

 people is the problem of the earliest history of the native races of our continent and their relation

to the races of the Old World” (Smith and Wobst: 2005: 129).

1 See Chersky and Chekanovsky’s first Paleolithic expedition in 1871 near a military hospital in Irkutsk.2

See Dall, W. H. 1870 Alaska and Its Resources. Boston: Lee and Shepard.

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Then beginning in the 1920s Soviet archaeologists had employed a type of historical-

materialistic methodology (Dolitsky: 1985: 361) that was not at all different from Boas’

American school of historical ethnology early on (Schlanger and Nordbladh: 2008: 54).

Historical materialism relied heavily upon a Marxist interpretation of the social sciences and

humanities (Bulkin: 1982: 286), which in some ways required a projection of a living ethnicity

into the past and this allowed for the cultural group to develop linearly in a set location. Whiledisagreeable by some methodologies, early interests by some such as Chester S. Chard,

highlighted the connectivity between the historical and prehistorical periods as the; “complete

absence of the artificial barriers that separate history from prehistory in the West-barriers that

exist only in the mind of the academic historian” (Chard: 1963: 538). In other words, the pointed

artificial line that splits time into two segments (history and prehistory) is based solely on one

culture’s ability to write or not, which is not so sharply defined in other regions of the world.

Surprisingly enough however, in the beginning of this era this allowed for a greater variety of 

 post-processual theories to develop that were later to be independently applied in the US as part

of the New Archaeology1 (although with more criteria than writing and metal use to determine its

separation). Dolitsky tell us that these early archaeologists; “suggested that archaeology be seen

as a social discipline independent of history that uses its own methods for the reconstruction of  past social structures and human behavior” (Dolitsky: 1985: 362). This view of the study of 

archaeology, independent of history, expresses the early chance for cohesion between US and

Soviet schools of thought.

In the end however, the majority of scholars were against this idea for a number of 

conventional and political reasons and those involved had to publicly admit their ‘mistake’ to the

new régime (Gening: 1982: 101). Part of the basis for this is that the tool of archaeology has a

somewhat different use by state ideology than other social disciplines such as ethnology. The

early Soviet state’s bid for legitimacy as a new form of government was to use archaeology as a

case that the current workers-state was a natural end-consequence in the material history of 

humanity (Kohl: 1998: 224-225). It was though that archaeology could therefore prove that the

natural desire to acquire wealth at the expense of the general populace was about to be

overcome. This use of archaeology as a tool took the form of a rediscovery of the remote past, an

interpretation that the natural procession of egalitarian ethnic groups that were interrupted by the

intrusion of feudal or capitalist policies and the new form of government was more of a return to

what was.

This primordialist construction of the past was not as untypical and isolated in its

construction as it may seem. Every modern nation state’s development in the 19th and 20th 

Century’s had to undergo the same process of creating a national link with the past. Whether it

followed the European model of finding a source region for its cultural ancestors, or the colonialmethod of ignoring the indigenous peoples that were already there and establishing a civilized

society in its stead (as in the United States), or by cleverly incorporating the indigenous

 population into the greater populaces consciousness (such as the concept of indigenismo2 in

Mexico) (Kohl: 1998: 227, 234) each modern nation state, regardless of its form of government

had to undergo this process. What was different was the fact that the new Soviet régime had to

 project an ideology into the past as well as its contemporary population. If the present was to be

seen in a new way, the conception of the past had to be reconstructed as well.

The tool of ethnography, on the other hand fared a different fate according to some

scholars. Yuri Slezkine suggests that the emerging Stalinist period did not have time for 

1I.e. anthropological archeology. See Watson’s “What the New Archaeology has Accomplished.”

2 See Kohl: 1998: “a movement that consciously incorporated the indigenous pre-Hispanic peoples of Mexico into a

redefined and more inclusive national identity” beginning in 1910 Mexican Revolution.

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emerging forms of new methodology and literary criticism. Along with ethnographers and

anthropologists, religious leaders from the Orthodox Church to shamans on the tundra of Siberia

were seen as a hindrance to the new status quo by party leadership. Any deviation from the

Marxist interpretation under the new leaders of the time was seen as a threat whether it be the

cultures under study or the researchers themselves. Remnants of the ‘bourgeois ethnographers’

were seen as dangerous as; “unrepentant kulaks and [their] errors of backwardness were as

 pernicious as backwardness itself” (Slezkine: 1991: 476). “Exposing the desk-bound enemy;” helater writes; “was sometimes as difficult as finding exploiters among the hunters and gathers of 

Siberia.” To many outside of the Soviet realm, this outward aggression towards ethnography

made it seem that fieldwork in ethnography and archaeology were both becoming incompatible

with US and European models in general. This was further fueled by comments made by such

ethnographers as N. M. Matorin decried that; ‘practical fieldwork, under existing conditions, was

imperialistic by nature’ and a new ‘special role for ethnography’ was needed (Matorin 1931: 20).

Ethnography was to be considered part of history as well, as a means of gathering information on

a pre-class society in relation to the newly forming post -class society. Thus as Slezkine suggests

that ethnography became too estranged from Marxism and that both sciences should be expelled

from one another, therefore; “Archaeology was charged with separating and deifying material

things while ethnology was… [incharged with] doing the same for culture” (Slezkine: 1991:481).

Contrary to this perception, other scholars suggest that this is simply a result of the dim

acquaintance with fieldwork and the methodologies in use from the 1930’s to the 1950’s by

Western scholars (Bulkin: 1982, Klejn: 1977), such as when substantial international works by

the French anthropologist G. H. Luquet’s The Art and Religion of Fossil Man contained only one

Russian example of Paleolithic art to represent the eastern half of the European continent and

western Asia (Luquet: 1930). And Vesvolod Avdiyev adds that; the October revolution brought

about [the] rebirth of archaeology by providing scientists working in all fields with possibilities

for the free and full development of their work” (Avdiyev: 1945: 221) by creating state-run

institutions and positions that were not beholden to the politics of economic and university

 policy.

More surprisingly, in early June 1944, several papers were presented on the last 25 years

of work in the USSR at a session at the Institute of Archaeology in Moscow which is probably

the most evident example that work was being conducted in the Soviet Union during this time.

Forums such as these were allotting for the discussion of the most pertinent problems addressing

the field of archaeology1 under the new regime. In fact, one of the most interesting and

intensively excavated sites in Asiatic Russia, K horezm, (which corresponds roughly to the later 

Khiva site) was begun in 1937  by S. P. Tolstov2 and was only interrupted during the most

intense years of the war (Chard: 1963: 542) and was presented at the conference while the war was still being fought. And Avdiyev adds; “Whole towns, castles and forts with well preserved

walls 60 feet high were brought to light” in the Kara-Kalpak Republic of Central Asia as

excavations in Kazakhstan between 1936 and 1938 in the Jambul and Alma Ata regions by A. N.

Bernstamm (Avdiyev: 1945: 224). In sum, work was being conducted and under the most

arduous conditions; it was just simply not as loudly broadcasted beyond its institutional walls as

similar projects of scale in the US and Europe.

well as

 N.P. Dyrenkova also makes clear that ethnology was still able to function and, in fact,

was to have a greater effect on Siberian/North American anthropology and archaeology in the

decades to come. During the 23rd International congress of the Americanists (1927-28?)

Dyrenkova discusses the cult of the bear among multiple cultures in the Northern Hemisphere

1 See S. V. Kiselev’s “Twenty-five Years of Historical Studies in the U.S.S.R.”2

See  Inter Alia С.П. Толстов, Древний Хорезм (Moscow, 1948).

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with an emphasis in the Turkic tribes of Central Asia (Dyrenkova: 1927). This concept of a piece

of folklore, derived not from the past, but from living cultures was to become a critical argument

in the comparative studies of Siberian-New World mythic tales1.

Briefly concerning the understanding of Soviet methodology itself, Bulkin helps to offer 

a different version to the isolation and stagnation described above by writing that researchers at

the time just simply; “condemned the ‘creeping empiricism’ and the preoccupation with theformal studies of artifacts,” or  goloye veshchevedeniye (naked artifactology) that was seen as too

 prevalent in the West (Bulkin: 1982: 274). This approach was a too isolated form of study of the

material culture in the past, which put it apart from the processes and the people that made them.

Archaeology for them was too limited in application and that the science under the empires in

the West was trying to hide the true egalitarian nature of early economics as a tool of suppression

for the subordinates of the elite. Archaeology as such did not disappear it was simply believed

that its use had changed as a science of the history of material culture.

This became manifest in the creation of the Russian Academy for the History of Material

Culture (RAHMC) in 1918 which was later changed into the greater Institute for the History of 

Material Culture of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (IHMC AS USSR) in 1937. Theinstitute was directed from Leningrad until 1943 when it was moved to Moscow during WWII

(Vasil’ev, S.: 2008). Philip Kohl believes that; “such organizations highlight the new political

dimensions of the discipline, including inevitably the ways in which archaeological research is

structured by the policies of specific nation-states” (Kohl: 1998: 225) as in the case of the USSR,

which for reasons of ideological development needed a certain degree of separation from

theories developing in Europe to function in the way that the Soviet state desired. The outside

theories that did not conform to this revision of the past were considered tainted and rejected.

And as a result, internal governmental scrutiny replaced academic review as the prime mover of 

change.

This did not however, exclude what was being found from exportation to the West.

Concerning new work in the Paleolithic era, E. Golomshtok provided an up-to-date review of 

Paleolithic art2 in the European part of the USSR in 1938 (Davis: 1983: 405) as well as the

English archaeologist V. Gordon Childe’s new acquaintance with Russian archaeology which

 brought additional site data and its accompanying theories to Europe. This particular open-

handed gesture is still well remembered today by Russian archaeologists (Мерперт Н.  Я.

/Merpert N. Y.: 1992: 189). Before in 1937 a paper entitled Archaeology in the Soviet Union 

which was co-authored by the American archaeologist Henry Field and a Russian Eugene

Prostov showed that collaboration was underway, even in this period of reorganization. This

article was published on the recent field expeditions of 1935-36 in the journal American

 Anthropologist and included areas as diverse as; Georgia and Abkhazia, Azerbaijan, Armenia,Dagestan, North Caucasus, Crimea and Black Sea Region, Ukraine, European Russia, Turkestan,

and Siberia only one year after their collection was processed and translated into English. The

 publication also listed the recent work done by the two institutions IAE (Institute of 

Anthropology and Ethnography of the State Academy of Sciences, Leningrad and GAIMK (State

Academy for the History of Material Culture, Leningrad). As well as giving a brief update on the

institute’s preparation of a reference handbook which included data on the distribution, statistics,

history, ethnography and socialization in the archaeological record, the paper also mentions a

key point in the projects of the time:

“which dealt with the ‘genesis and development of the primitive communist society,’ [and] included fifty theses onthe prehistoric development of society based on archaeological data, the history of prehistoric economics, the history

1 See below and Yuri Berezkin’s The Cosmic Hunt: Variants of a Siberian-North American Myth.2

See Golomshtok, E. 1938. The Old Stone Age in European Russia. Trans. Am. Phi- los. Soc. 29 (Pt. 2): 191-468.

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of marriage and the family, the origin of the tribe, of primitive religion, and of art. Paleolithic specimens from theCaucasus, and materials dealing with the ancient history of metallurgy in the U.S.S.R. were [also] studied inconnection with the project” (Field and Prostov: 1937: 458-59).

This in turn helps to demonstrate the amount of work being done under the new system and how

the new system was, despite some efforts not to, in the process of combining concepts of 

anthropology and archaeology in terms of the study of material culture.

Even more surprising is the work of the Czech-American anthropologist, Dr. Ales

Hrdlicka (1869-1943) who made several trips to Russia during the turbulent years from the pre-

Revolutionary Period and up to the beginning of WWII (1909, 1912, and 1939). While not

typical, this expedition does demonstrate that it was possible for foreign researchers to work 

within the Soviet Union (see Figure 1). It should also be mentioned that Hrdlicka was also

largely responsible for giving credit and recognition to one of the more prominent and active

Soviet archaeologists, Okladnikov (see below), outside the USSR for the first time and was also

able to visit him on a personal basis on the Angara River, Siberia, in 1939 (Laughlin: 1985: 778).

So despite the political barriers as well as the methodological upheaval set into motion,

several leading anthropologists and archaeologists had some mechanism for describing the progress and condition of Soviet fieldwork  in American and other academic journals. In addition,

the American anthropologists Field and Prostov make note of other collaborative work at the

time including; V. N. Rimsky-Korsakoff’s selected material from Soviet publications on display

in the library of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University and in 1936, A. M. Tallgren’s

 published articles on Eurasia in Septentrionalis Antiqua (Field and Prostov: 1937: 459).

To add to the larger projects listed above, salvage or rescue archaeological projects

(which only began as a postwar development in the United States) had its start in the 1920’s in

the Soviet Union (Chard: 1963: 541), where large projects such as dams and power plants

received special earmarked funds for that purpose. Projects such as Farkhad archaeological

expedition working with the 15 kilometer-long canal of the Farkhad power station in Uzbekistan

were able to begin work even during the war in February 1943. And prominent archaeologists

such as A. Okladnikov were able to begin projects in 1940 and continue unimpeded in Yakutia

for several years (Tarakanova: 1946: 11). These projects in turn became known to Western

archaeologist almost as fast as they were completed by the efforts of Okladnikov and others who

 published directly into English.

It is also important to note that what did emerge from this period, and has in some form

 persisted into the current period of work, is the concept of ethnogenesis. The cultural concept of 

ethnogenesis was a major cornerstone of Soviet archaeology (and anthropology), which was

generally described as the progressive evolution of a given culture through a series of stagesfrom hunter-gather to the formation of a state. It stems mostly as an economic term and from

what Dolitsky more clearly states; “ethnogenesis simply means a historical continuity or 

transformation of one cultural tradition into another” (Dolitsky: 1985: 362) as seen through its

material culture. An excellent example of this theory can be seen in the work of T. S. Passak’s

work with the Tripolje Culture in Ukraine in which he maintains that; “the Tripolje culture arose

independently and that the Tripolje tribes were the most developed and civilized inhabitants of 

the whole of Eastern Europe” (Avdiyev: 1945: 222-23). In this case Passak used the idea of 

ethnogenesis directly in response to Nazi claims during the occupation in that Tripolje culture

originated in the Dnieper and Dniester basins (an ‘Indo-Germanic’ region) during the Neolithic

Period (Avdiyev: 1945: 223) and as such, it was not an indigenous (i.e. Slavic) development, but

rather a projection of the stylized Germanic supremacy of the Nazi regime projected into the past.

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mammoth bones and Laughlin in Nikolski Bay, Alaska). Later in 1970, work began on the

recovery skeletons and artifacts of the Dennis Medvedev party, massacred on Chaluka (Aleut

archipelago) in the spring of 1764 which, in the words of the Laughlin; “illustrates the

combination of methodologies (author’s emphasis) that must be employed to recover the

remaining companies of the other three ships lost to the uprising of the Aleut confederation

(Laughlin: 1985: 775).

By 1974, through continuing contact, The Joint American-Soviet Field Team was

established and was established by Dr. V. K. Dobroselsky, of the Soviet consulate in

Washington, D.C. The National Science Foundation, National Academy of Sciences, Department

of State, Department of the Interior, University of Connecticut, and Wenner-Gren Foundation for 

Anthropological Research were some of the many international sponsors of the project which

was to include many of the names now associated with Siberian/Paleolithic archaeology of the

 period in the West such as; A. P. Derevyanko, R. S. Vasilievsky, V. E. Larichev, and A. K.

Konopatskiy (Laughlin: 1975, 1985).

One other brief note on the influence of the Soviet schools which is highly deserving of 

further study is the changing use of ethnogenesis during this period in Russia and the post-Colonial drives for independance during the 1960’s. In Africa as well as in southern Asia many

 post-Colonial nation states were just beginning to seek a legitimate right to power and several

states such as Zimbabwe (which is actually named after an archaeological site) sought the use of 

archaeology to establish a link with the past (Kohl: 1998: 236). Soviet archaeology’s on-going

 presence in many of these regions as well as the desire for greater political influence may have

helped influenced the relationship between the state and archaeology in these new nation states

 by the theory of ethnogenesis. The use of a theory that implies that a given ethnicity can evolve

in a linear fashion on a traditionally demarcated piece of land would have been of great use to

the new local control of these new states. In one form it helps to discredit any exterior form of 

rule by giving credence to the ability, or potential ability, to the indigenous population who were

once though as inferior to foreign ruling class. In another sense it may be used as a tool to annex

other territory that is deemed the original homeland by one group over another, whether the idea

was locally derived or not. Regardless of the end, the cultural material means as a political tool is

worthy to mention as one of the additional side-effects of international exchange.

More strictly in the Soviet realm of academic production, important new legislative and

logistical achievements were being made available. By 1957 there were over one-thousand

 professional ar chaeologists and the official state bibliography published 8,765 titles between

1941 and 19571, which far out-paced working being done in the West which was confined to

academic summer sessions and salvage projects which were mostly related to the construction of 

the new interstate system (Chard: 1963: 539-40). Most long-term projects in the Soviet Unionwere given their own monographs and several of the larger museums also produced regular 

 publications on work concerning their collections. This was partially due to the strong

governmental support from the beginning and the financial investment in similar projects after 

the post-war period. In fact, beginning in the mid 1950s the Soviet government introduced

legislation that required construction firms to carefully explore and root-out any possible damage

to archaeological sites and to set aside a portion of their received funds to any needed

archaeological research” (Bulkin: 1982: 277), though the true level of actual implementation of 

this law is unknown. Nevertheless, these series of laws were to lay the foundation to what is

1 1957 marks the first year of publication for Soviet Archaeology, the most widely distributed Soviet academic

 journal of the time.

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called Cultural Resource Management (CRM) in the US (which was only enacted into off icially

into law in the 1980s) and it continues to play a vital role in major construction sites today1.

So as a result in the Soviet Union, between 1968 and 1972, 14,812 separate publications

of archaeology were produced, with approximately 10% of these pertaining to the Russian

Paleolithic (Davis: 1983: 403). It is also worthy to note the amount of archaeological-themed

 popular writing by leading scholars for the general public (Davis: 1983: 420). While not arequirement for the position, this gave the greater population a higher appreciation for the field

which in turn reciprocated in the low amount of reported site looting and higher lecture

attendance.

Thus, cooperation between the West and the Soviet Union at this time should be more

accurately described as inconsistent, rather than closed. While access was granted to most

existing collections in museums, permission to do independent fieldwork was absent in most

cases (Chard: 1963: 542) although Laughlin was able to drill bone cores from the femora of 

Aleuts, Eskimos, and others contained in the Academy of Sciences in Moscow and Leningrad

from a National Institute on Aging (grant number 1299)2. Given the strained political situation

however, it is not surprising to learn that foreign archaeologists and anthropologists were notallowed to conduct fieldwork in remote areas unattended. It is also important to remember that if 

the positions were reversed, Soviet archaeologists would probably also be restricted in access to

rural locations or in other words, access was closed on both sides, which is irrespective of who

actually shut the door.

What is unexpected is some of the segmented opinions that developed by some who did

enter the Soviet realm for academic study. In 1975 Ernest Gellner, a professor of Sociology at

the Economic school in London, stated in his paper entitled The Soviet and the Savage that the

British anthropologist and the Soviet ethnographer were from completely different philosophical

domains. He writes; “they constitute a different world, and in many ways an impressive one, a

world which stands in sharp contrast to at least British, if not to all Western anthropology

(Gellner: 1975: 595). Gellner continues to emphasize the deep divide between the contemporary

Western “functionalist-statistic” form of anthropology and the Soviet “evolutionist-historical”

method. And while acknowledging that each school of thought has its faults Gellner clearly puts

the contemporaneous theories of the Soviet school well behind its peer in Britain;

“The days of deliberate a-historism among British anthropologists are long past… these half-forgotten,taken-for-granted and no-longer-exciting conventions of British anthropological discourse… recover their salienceand their flavour, and their problematical status… to people who have never (the original author’s stress) taken themfor granted, the most important is the synchronic perspective (Gellner: 1975: 595).

This perceived “backwardness” of the Soviet other is an unnecessary personal opinion of someone who has entered into a field that pledges to be an objective eye in the study of other 

cultures (past or present). Differing theories of cultural development were put on a linear 

timescale using the British school as a marker, which ironically uses the same tiered system of 

stages that Gellner so adamantly criticizes. Similar criticism came from the leaders in Soviet

anthropology of the time in response, as Olga Akhmanova replied; “I fail to see how a piece of 

 journalism can be given Current Anthropology treatment, i.e. [the] form the object of scientific

discussion” (Akhmanova in reply to Gellner (above article): 1975: 601). Akhmanova continues

to scrutinize everything from the vagueness of the title to the notion that Gellner forgot to

criticize Lenin. Other such as Frank B. Bessac from the University of Montana in the US,

1 A contemporary example can be found in the discovery of an archaeological site under the proposed site for theGazprom building. See  На Территории “Отха  Центра” Появится Музей  Археологии in Metro News (St.Petersburg), 28 September 2010.2

See Kpammcue coo6umenuu' Huemumyma amnotpa (fiuu, XXVI (1957), pp. 18-33.

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suggests that any well-trained anthropologist would not have undergone such a cultural shock 

and defends the right of the Soviet ethnologist to be different minded (Bessac in reply to Gellner:

1975: 602). While not as common place as one would hope, this example does demonstrate that

not every scholar followed the more public perception of us versus them.

Generally speaking, the post-Soviet atmosphere saw a sharp rise in the amount of 

fieldwork and subsequent publications over the pre-war decades. Cooperation, whileencountering some familiar stumbling blocks, was able to continue at the small but steady level

it had seen previously. More significantly, the development of Soviet theory and methodology

was able to reach a level in which it could stand on its own and possibly export some of its more

general concepts abroad.

The Late Soviet Period

By the early 1980’s over 500 excavations or reconnaissance surveys were being

conducted each year on the eight and a half million square miles of USSR territory (Davis: 1983:

403). Partnership in archaeological and anthropological work during this time was said to be;

“desultory and asymmetrical at some times, vigorous and systematic at other times” (Laughlin:1985: 777) and concurred with similar levels in the past. However, there was the new US-USSR

Working Party Conference, which was held in both Alaska and in Connecticut in September 1-

20, 1981 and it brought together four Soviet scholars with their American counterparts in a

conference about key locations of the Russian-American period on Kodiak, Umnak, Unalaska,

and the Pribilof Islands in Alaska (Laughlin: 1985: 786). Soviet archaeologists, who were

confident and which had developed well enough their own ideology, added significant amounts

of new data in areas in Russia that were previously kept quiet due to military activities.

The first joint symposium specifically on the Upper Paleolithic and Paleoindian

adaptations was held in Leningrad in July of 1989, which was followed by several joint visits to

ongoing excavations at Amvrosievka, Kosoutsy, Kostenki, Sungir and Ludinovo (Soffer and

Praslov: 1993: 3). By this time the greater political difficulties were beginning to soften and

many scholars, although researching within the same field, we beginning to meet each other for 

the first time. This conference produced one of the most nationally balanced and cited works of 

collaboration concerning the Paleolithic/Paleoindian field of study. Kostenki to Clovis, edited by

the authors cited above, brought together several different up-to-date works that continues to

influence the theory of New World migration to today almost single handily (see the journal

analysis below).

Overall, Soviet archaeologists had contributed greatly to the fields of: Paleolithic Art,

Pleistocene environmental analysis, lithic use-wear and dwelling structure analysis and the peopling of the New World that was to be of use to all researchers of the Paleolithic (Davis:

1983 403-404). This level of activity was to continue until late into the decade when documents

 became sorted due to political upheaval. Unfortunally little information has been made available

on the condition of on-going fieldwork projects as well as collaboration and the scale that was

seen above. No longer are general summaries on the volume of fieldwork released in the West

and likewise vice versa. What is known, and is described in greater detail below, is that only 14

articles were published in the journal Soviet Archaeology between 1985 and 1991 that cited some

form of Western collaboration or project any North America. While this does not include

 projects pertaining to other portions of the globe, it is reflexive of the degree of exchange that

was soon to develop between the US and Russia, ironically in the period it was most able to do

so.

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In it also important to note some of the late developments in methodology concerning

collaboration and debate in the field of archaeology. Differences in methodology and theory

exist in all fields of research and this distinction can lie at a multiplicity of levels including; the

local, regional and international spheres of debate. The existence of the greater underlying

criticism of ideology that developed between the Western and Russian research institutions has

not been at issue in the preceding analysis, but rather the degree of the contemporaneous

interpretation of work being conducted in the Soviet Union and the severity of themisinterpretation of collaboration. It was only during this latter period that internal evaluation

 began to appear in print at-large to the West (Dolitsky: 1985, Kozhanovsky: 1999) which intern

invited open remarks from US scholars concerning the established theories used by Soviet

archaeologists. This more open exchange in opinion may also help to explain the decrease in the

 printed recognition among both nations mentioned above.

Beyond the perceived incompatibility of Soviet methodology it was still a major 

complaint by several noted scholars in the West throughout this period on their inability to gain

access to work and materials within the USSR. T. Dragadze working on an ethnographic study in

southern Georgia, for example, complained of his notes being confiscated by the KGB and his

fear of reprisal on the village in which he worked with, leaving him to forge publication for eightyears (Tishkov et al.: 1992: 384). And yet still more have been highly critical of the quantity and

quality of the work being done by Soviet scholars. It is true that travel and availability of 

information was restricted by both governments and controlling institutions, but it is also true

that access was also restricted by the individuals own ability to maneuver through a foreign

system and their own position within the associations in which they sought assistance.. Some of 

the examples cited above (most notably Laughlin) have proven that there was not a single,

 blanketed attempt at the control of information. His ability to travel to remote parts of the

Russian Far East and Siberia as well as his ability to invite esteemed colleagues from the East to

actual works in progress in Alaska has shown this to be a valid statement.

This phenomenon is in no way constructed as an argument to the existence of a blanketed

 bias among the periods researchers, but rather it must be seen as a manifestation of the

technological, linguistic, personal and communicational limits of the time. Besides the well

known language barrier, which is discussed below, technological limitations were in place, such

as the publishing capacity of academic journals in both nations. Serving as an example and

 published in a widely read and reviewed publication, the American Anthropologist , Laughlin’s

chronology of late Soviet cooperation may not have been received by other academics within the

field, thereby skewing the assessment of the situation. Obvious greater technological mediums of 

exchange such as the internet and publishing distribution would have significantly changed the

 perception of this exchange and quite possibly eliminating it by its own means. However,

technology alone does not suffice as an explanation to clarify this disparity. In the proceedingsections below, the current type and exchange of methodology in place will be discussed,

followed by an in-depth look at what has actually been published with the technological and

 political barriers of the preceding era loosened. By demonstrating that a greater comparison of 

work as well as theory that is and has been available, the well worn excuses of distance,

language and politics can no longer be used as a leaning-post of miscommunication.

Contemporary Methodology: a migration of theory 

The immediate collapse of the Soviet Union and its effects on archaeology and

anthropology can be measured in two ways. The first is from the instantaneous vantage point of the event itself and the second is in retrospect of what had happened. The former was a moment

in time that was largely argumentative and defensive. Valery A. Tishkov who was director of the

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Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Science at the time of the

collapse, at first assigned the impending change to a moral crisis at the individual level, but then

later called for nothing short of a complete overhaul of its greater meaning to the scientific

community. In fact, he turned the attention of the problem to the institutions of science

themselves by stating;

“The "crisis" in Soviet ethnography has to do not so much with the social conditions under which our science nowoperates as with the discipline itself, including its central authoritative body, the Institute of Ethnology andAnthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.” 

Criticism of the institutions themselves in this manner continued across the board as he argued

that his fellow colleagues had lost their better morals and sought refuge in the nostalgia of the

 past;

“Observing the general erosion of morals, lack of professionalism, and internal constraints that have become secondnature to Soviet people… [and] some of my colleagues obviously consider it most important at present to talk about

continuity and the achievements of Soviet ethnography.” (Tishkov: 1992: 371).

Finally he resorted to referring to the field as being “sick” and that the sciences were;“still captives of the class-struggle mentality,” followed by a calling for an ‘ethnography of the

scientific community’ to assess it current state internally (Tishkov: 1992: 377). This internal

struggle, as it now can be seen in hindsight, was in-part affected by a greater restructuring of 

Communist ideology in favor of more nationalistic policies that were surfacing in the greater 

 post-Soviet realm.

It was during this turbulent time, from the Balkans to the southern Caucasus, that violent

conflict was being intertwined with archaeology and ethnographic claims to territory where

archaeological sites were often the site of violent demonstrations (Kohl: 1998: 224). Russia, as a

 pre-Soviet state, was starting to separate in the dogmatic approach to its own ideology from the

Soviet Period which was then accompanied by its own national revitalization policy. Ancient principalities such as Staraya Ladoga on the Volhov River (see full description below), for 

example, were rediscovered as a source of national pride as well as a new source of revenue

 based on tourism. This was made ready by official state visits form Vladimir Putin and Sergei

Mironov (Figure 5), among others who were eager to have a physical connection with the

history of past leadership to lend legitimacy to the current regime. It is also interesting to

consider that this event could also have been seen as a historical counter-claim to this portion of 

the Russian territory as it was in defense against the local break-away Baltic Republics claims

for territory which were only 5-hours away by train and seeking the same type of legitimacy for 

their territory1.

This ripened the political uses of archaeology and anthropology as this type of tool thatwere to become at least partly responsible for the renewed interest and funding of fieldwork 

within the Russian Federation. What was to subsequently follow this breath of activity was the

critical discourse between Russian, Western European and American scholars in the field as the

findings of such endeavors began to make their way on to paper. Not surprisingly, it was this

effort by Russian archaeologists to find its new position on the global floor of debate that helped

to fully open the door between Russian and Western thought.

1The mid-1990’s was the start of a substantial increase in EU-sponsored archaeological excavations such as the

Vabaduse site, located in the Old Town section of Tallinn, Estonia. This area was later to become a UNESCO World

Heritage site.

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Choosing sides 

In Western Europe, response to the new “openness” and self-criticism of Russia was a

welcomed diversion. For at least the previous decade Western Europe and North America had

 been exchanged in a cross-fire of condemnation involving a growing diversion of methodology

and terminology. Kohl tells us that; “these traditions characteristically coincide with specific

nation-states… [and] there are distinctive traditions [that] can be profitably compared andcontrasted1” (Kohl: 1998: 224). Old World and New World excavation and their perspective

sequencing techniques had diverged and taken on defensive postures over time and this has made

them somewhat incompatible in a greater understanding of early human culture after the last

glaciation. Heinrich addresses the greater problem of the lack of foreign acknowledgement in

one another’s theories in; Archaeologists and Migrations: A Problem of Attitude, where he

suggests that the current approaches to migrational questions have more to do with the present

than the past (Härke: 1998: 19). According to Härke geographic contexts and recent history in

Europe and the US have been responsible for much of the divergence in migrational theory.

German archaeologists define the nation-state based on ethnicity, not on a birth or residence in a

geographical location2 as accorded to the British and American traditions. As a result indicated

 by Härke, each school of thought saw perceptions of past ethnicity and migrations differentlythan the other. German, for example, could see the possibility of an ethnicity moving across

territory while maintaining its cultural distinctiveness. English theory, stemming largely from its

history of absorption of different peoples into its territory, saw migration as an alteration of an

ethnicity to its new environment such as the general belief that the modern English individual is

actually a mix of Roman, Gaelic, Saxon and other ethnicities that intermixed on English 

territory. The USSR’s timely dissolution and consolidation with the West, accompanied by its

own versions of ethnicity, would plant it firmly into the ongoing debate of the time.

This dialog, which was mostly confined to the distant strikes of artillery in academic

 journals, followed a spike in the volume of discoveries that profoundly added to our 

understanding of the early formative periods in human history. In one such volley from the

European school of thought concerning this debate, Otte and Keeley stated:

“Synthetic studies concerning the Palaeolithic cultures of the Old World are characteristically based on the evidencefrom a specific region, often the stratigraphy of a single ‘key’ site. The reconstructions proposed in such syntheses

therefore tend to be diachronic and limited in geographical range” (Otte and Keeley: 1990: 577).

In other words, this methodology is largely based on the idea of a type site, or when one

 particular excavation site (usually the first one recognized to contain something different)

 becomes the comparative example (as well as the official nomenclature) for all other sites with

similar features and artifacts. Yet it should be noted that this method of terminology actually

 predates archaeology as a discipline and was derived largely from the labeling methodology of 19th Century geologists who named certain geological strata after the local region such as the

Cambrian or  Burgess Shale (Harris: 1989: 7-9).

Prehistoric archeology relied and continues to rely heavily upon geographic stratigraphy

to be able to reasonably date artifacts and cultural complexes and it was only natural to assume

the same nomenclature style. Several primary prehistorical culture complexes in both Europe and

1For an example comparison between Russian and Spanish archaeological traditions see; “Teoria y Prcctica de las

Prehistoria: Perspectivas desde los Extremos de Europa (Theory and Practice of Prehistory: Views from the Edgesof Europe),” Martinez-Navarrete MI, ed., 1993. Santander P., University of Cantabria.2 The 1913 German law; Reich- und Staatsangehörigkeitsgesetz (which was still in force as late as 1993) definedGerman citizenship by decent from German parents at an undefined point in the past. Ethnic Germans which have been removed from German territory for several generations are still considered unless serious stipulations suggest

otherwise (such as a criminal record).

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 North America were based upon this methodology and used such names as; Clovis and Folsom(named after the towns of Clovis and Folsom in the US state of New Mexico where they were

first discovered) and in Europe, Aurignacian (named after the site of Aurignac in the Haute

Garonne region in France) which has come to represent the chronology of Western Europe in

general as the replacement period of Neanderthals by modern humans (Bischoff et al.: 1989:

563-564) or the Solutrean (a lithic blade and bone technology named after the site of Crôt du

Charnier at Solutré in eastern France) by the French paleontologist Henry Testot-Ferry in 1866.

On the other side of the field and beginning with the development of the concept of  New Archaeology (Otte and Keeley: 1990, Watson: 1991), which discovered that this type of regional

typology caused inconsistencies and geographical overlapping, a new type of nomenclature was

 being developed the relied on more descriptive terms to describe artifacts such as;  side-notched or  fluted-point . It was the hope that this new form of description would free archeologists from

the geographical bounded terms that were used before, not to mention the prevailing form of 

 political-correctness prevalent in the US at the time that disliked the naming of indigenous

cultures after European geographical nomenclature. The Solutrean as a type of artifact for 

example, was being unearthed in such places as Africa and allegedly the Americas, or in other 

words, similar artifacts in design were being discovered in other places than they were originallymeant to depict as being distinct (e.g. Western Europe). In the case of the American example, a

similar type of artifact design (the Solutrean) was found in both the New and Old Worlds and

this, in and of itself, was enough to justify a cultural link despite; “the several thousand miles of 

[the Atlantic] Ocean and the 5,000 radiocarbon years that separate the two” (Straus et al .: 2005:

507). The basic pointed-oval design of the stone blade, while very simple and thus having a high

 probability of being independently replicated was considered to be evidence of a transatlantic

connection. This common mistake, when a similar type of technology is used to justify a cultural

link (such as between Egyptian and Mayan Pyramids), is often the unconscious result of a

typology based solely on regional placement.

Thus to reiterate the main point, underlying this basic divide was whether or not historical

 processes and the explanations of their materials thereof could be projected back into the

 preliterate past of prehistory (Clark and Lindy: 1991: 577). The Russian belief which was seen as

stemming from older Soviet models at the time, originally believed that historical models were

able to extend into the far-distant past. However, unlike Europe, Russia’s vast territory contained

a multiplicity of indigenous groups still in existence which made it open to some of the North

American concepts prevalent at the time.

Archaeology in the New World as a whole must construct and present itself in terms of 

working with a living, continuous culture which views itself as the modern representatives of the

 prehistoric cultures under study. European preconceptions and the resulting methodology areentirely different. Due to its long recorded history of migration and invasion, from the Egyptians

to the Huns, it is reasonably believed that the modern occupants of the European continent are at

least somewhat different from the people that existed fifty-thousand to even three-thousand years

ago. Different sub-types of human species such as the Neanderthals or Cro-Magnon populations

are proven to be both physically and culturally different form modern peoples. As a result, there

are few, if any archaeologists that can claim a direct link to the origins of the peopling of Europe

with their modern population.

Yet in North America, not only are these indigenous cultures seen to represent the

immediate and recorded past of the last 500 years of European contact, but by both belief and

law, they are seen as the representatives of the more distant past which in many cases, can project itself back to the initial migration into the New World. Occurring at precisely the same

time as the Soviet regime was coming to an end, was the revitalization of Native American

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values and rights and the passing of new federal laws within the United States that was to have a

 profound impact on archaeology from this point forward.

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)1 was passed

into law on November 16th 1990. The law required that all human remains judged to of Native

American origin as well as any associated cultural artifacts (burial goods) be returned to their 

tribe of origin, if known, or to a modern regional tribe if the exact location could not bedetermined. Furthermore, any newly discovered human remains that after an initial analysis,

were determined to be Native American were to be immediately surrendered to the local tribal

authorities. This law was passed by congress with the greatest of intentions and served to reverse

over two centuries of mishandling of human bones by negligent museums and a few

anthropologists who ignored the burial customs and writes of a living people (Dewar: 2001:

189). This intention was well received by the archaeological and anthropological community as

it was seen as a way to finally mend past grievances, the problem occurred though with the scope

of the law and its premise based on religious and beliefs that could not be scientifically proven to

 be true.

Most indigenous peoples on the North and South American continents follow the doctrinethat as a culture they have always been there and are not migrants from another place 2. This

 premise assumes that all  prehistoric (Before the European Contact Period of the late 15 th 

Century) human remains are believed to be related to modern living peoples, regardless of how

old the remains are. In most cases this is not a problem as bones, upon an initial examination and

comparison of data from human remains before the law went into effect, are found to be of this

or that indigenous culture and are promptly returned. The point of legal and ethic conflict arises

from much more ancient remains of questionable origin. The greater conflict of science and

religion is beyond the scope of this paper, but suffice it to say that in this particular case science

is not ready to agree with belief in that the ancient remains of people that lived ten to twenty

thousand years ago are the same indigenous peoples that live here today. This, however, does not

say that this belief is not true, but rather that it has not been  proven.

What does this mean to the greater scientific community and to the relationship between

Russian and North American archaeology? Again, these particular events have relevance due to

the timing of the change in North American methodology that coincided with the newly found

‘openness’ of Russian/Soviet archaeology and the greater debate that was to follow between

Europe and North America as a result. As NAGPRA began to take shape and enter the legal

realm it tied the hands of archaeologists and inhibited their ability to offer viable methodologies

to explain the existence of people in the New World. North American archaeologists like their 

European counterparts believed that the existence of people in the New World is the result of a

migratory phenomenon, it is just that the how, when and who of the theory remains to be piecedtogether accurately.

The case of the Kennewick Man can shed light on the way this problem can manifest and

disrupt the archaeological community. In the mid 1990’s an Army Corps of Engineers project

located some human remains on Federal lands in the US state of Oregon. After a coroner termed

the remains to not be recent they were handed over to a local archaeologist, Jim Chatters, for 

1 United States Public Law 101-601, 104 Stat. 3048.2 A few Native American folklore stories do mention a ‘great ‘migration from another place. Glooscapi the story of 

the Four Seasons and crossing the ‘great ice’ is one often cited example followed by O-chi-pe-o-ee, the story of theCrane (bird) people that were searching for new lands. Both legends originate in south east Canada. See also: “OnBeing First: Cultural Innovation and Environmental Consequences of First Peopling,” (program and abstracts of the

31st

Annual Chacmool Conference).

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further analysis1 (Chatters: 1997, Dewar: 2001: 153). It was then that remains were discovered to

 be approximately nine-thousand years old based on radiocarbon dating and by the fact that the

man had a lithic projectile point imbedded in his pelvic bone and known as a Cascade point,

which is usually dated between 5,000 and 9,000 years before the present (Chatters: 1997). The

turmoil began once the remains were examined and a correct origin could not be initially

determined. Chatters determined that some of the characteristics might possible resemble

standard European osteological measurements and that the remains where dissimilar to modernnative populations (Goodman: 1997: 3-4, Chatters: 1998: 21). Not surprisingly, Native American

tribal groups were insulted by such a claim and a ten-year legal battle over who is in charge of 

the human remains ensued. Tribal leaders wanted the remains reburied without question and

further analysis, while leading anthropological and archaeological associations sued for a

continued analysis to legally and scientifically determine whether or not the remains could be

seen as “Native American” or not. The latter argument, if followed through, would have

 profound consequences not only on the origins of this particular individual, but on an entire

 belief system. In the end, the Army Corps of Engineers chose to avoid this greater debate and

hand over responsibility to the Wall Walla tribe and the end result remains uncertain.

What this example attempts to demonstrate is that because of this and similar actionsacross North America, the link (true or otherwise), between the living indigenous cultures of 

 North America and the peoples of the distant past are irreversibly connected quite literally at the

hip. Academically, this is reflected in the departmental link between anthropology and

archaeology, which the latter is often seen as a subdiscipline of the former. And the resulting

debate on methodology concerning how to interpret and construct the past was a result of these

legal changes on the North American side, as well as the growing division in excavation

methodology and terminology on both sides of the Atlantic. So stemming from a projection of 

 prehistory into the present rather that than opposite, North American archaeologists rejected the

notion of European models of population movements and the use of general paradigms to

describe the movements of populations.

Coming from this very argument archaeologists of this generation wrote; “paradigms are

assertions about the way the world is or the way the world is perceived to be” (Casti: 1989),

which at the higher (and often metaphysical) level; “have no objective reality (Clark and Lindy:

1991: 477). In other words, what Clark and Lindy were arguing is that the constructed patterns of 

European prehistory (the Aurignacian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, etc.) were artificial constructs

that were now being seen as real events and cultures rather than typological constructs.

Paleolithic archaeologists who studied under the European model fought back and

argued that;

“This tendency by the New Archaeology… of the rejection of ‘historical’ explanations of prehistoric change such as

migration and diffusion in favor of ‘processual’ ones which emphasize internal systematic change. The intellectualfocus is no longer on prehistoric sequences of events, but on the process and stages of social evolution” (Otte andKeeley: 1990: 577).

Otte and Keeley argued that the focus on a series of events in prehistory (i.e. its history) for a

number of reasons had become passé and unpopular due to, among other things, the post-modern

concept of political correctness. “European prehistory (author’s emphasis) is now conceived as a

story of indigenous developments, occasionally assisted by minor diffusion (a form of migration)

(Otte and Keeley: 1990: 578). The fact that a culture progressed (at least in a material sense) by

invasion or by a form of external migration, rather than by its own local development was

1 See also Archaeological Protection Act permit number: DACW68-4-96-40, issued by the Army Corps of 

Engineers on 30 July 1996 in the Walla Walla Tribal District of Oregon.

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considered to be offensive. Part of the reason for this change stemmed from the sequence of 

event s that had occurred in the United States. Thus the Native American rejection of a migration

in any form, either to explain their existence or technological level, was unacceptable. This in

turn lead to a methodological change from the chronology of events to a study of indigenous

 processes and local development, which was beginning to affect other areas of archaeology

outside of the North American model.

These very events and the turbulence of the 1990s put Russian archaeologists in the

crossfire of this divide though it is important to also note that this did not come as a complete

surprise to the academics of the time. While not always agreeable, even among its own

supporters, the concepts and methodologies of Marxist-archaeology did provide Soviet

archaeologists with a convenient tool to keep many concepts of both the North American and

European model at arms length. The ethno-genetic model described in the previous section and

its emphasis on material culture from the Marxist views on the means of production, successfully

secured its otherness from many Western models. Since the wall of theory had been torn down in

Russia and the other former Soviet Block nations, they were expected to inter-combine their 

schools of academic thought into some form of the Western model. Yet, like the notions of 

Western democracy and capitalism, Russian archaeologists were expected to openly denouncemany of their  socialist forms of archaeological and anthropological theory overnight and

embrace the established (and thereby correct) forms already in practice in the West. Praise for 

his efforts came from such Western anthropologists as Katherine Verdery from Johns Hopkins

University, admired Tishkov’s “tremendous verve, courage, and intelligence” in his “diligen[ce]

to align their discipline more fully with Western anthropology (Tishkov et al.: 1992: 392).

Tishkov, speaking in 1992, wrote on the pressures facing Russian ethnologists and as can

 be surmised, for the other sciences of the time as well:

“It would be an oversimplification, as well as moral self- indulgence, to assess with uncompromising repugnance the

 pressures that have operated on the discipline from outside (particularly the former ideological and political regimeand the general state of the Soviet social sciences) without applying the same strict criteria to oneself, one'scolleagues, and the discipline as a whole (Tishkov et al.: 1992: 371).

The sudden closeness and intrusiveness of Western thought, Tishkov argued, was that the new

forms of theory made present were as much as a form of “self-indulgence” with Western

ideology and its code of ethics, as they were with the actual disagreement of Marxist ideology

(Tishkov: 1992: 372).

Even though some Western scholars welcomed the Academy of Sciences to the front

lines such as T. Dragadze from the Centre for Caucasian and Central Asian Studies in England

who wrote on the idea that; “the rapprochement with the international academic community isheartening; how refreshing to learn he shares the cri de coeur which some of us Western

observers have experienced for decades!” (Tishkov et al. 1992: 384) while at the same time

acknowledging the shortcomings of the Soviet systems illusions with their ‘dogmas from the past

régime.’ And finally, Yuri Slezkine of the University of California saw Tishkov as an

enlightened insider in his attempts to; “persuade his Commonwealth colleagues to abandon the

old ways in favor of the American practices that he knows so well-from fieldwork requirements,

 periodic house-cleanings, and departmental structures...” (Tishkov et al: 1992: 391).

Overall, this welcome-mat was not large enough to cover the natural habit to protect what

one has already done and although the flag over the Kremlin changed the people within its

institutional walls did not. The eagerness of some Western researchers to collaborate was metwith a similar quantity of paternal instruction that insulted the integrity of those at the receiving

end of this version of world politics. By the end of the decade, the volume of aid and instruction

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had blended into a steady hum of background noise leaving no other choice for Russian

researchers, but to quietly shut the door.

The quite revolution

Beginning in the last decade, Russia as a whole began to reassert its own sense of 

sovereignty. The flood of foreign researchers in the last decade was regulated to a steady trickleof dedicated professionals such as Goebel who still argued for the establishment of a permanent

link between American and Russian archaeologists (Vasil’ev: 2009: 18). It was under these

quieter circumstances, and a slight generational change, that Russian archaeology found its new

footing.

Part of the reason for real change has been described above in the fact that significant

archaeological sites and their easy-to-promote material remains are needed to underwrite new

nationalist promotions (Kohl: 1998: 225) such as at Staraya Ladoga, but this does not explain the

overall change in Russian methodology and theory. It is important to remember that Russian

archaeologists were already accustomed to several aspects of modern archaeological methods

that were just coming of age in the West. Cultural Resource Management Projects (as they areknown in the US) continued to be a part of the large industrial projects of the Russian

Federation. Projects such as the Kursk Nuclear Power Station had a considerable impact on

surrounding archaeological sites and it was now possible for Russian archaeologist to not only

report what they have found, but also to voice their open concern about their destruction

( Чубур/Chubur: 1996: 167).

In the West, technological advances arrived in a relative steady flow allowing for a

gradual application into the field without great disruption. Archaeologists, perhaps as a result of 

studying past technologies, are quite conservative when considering new technological methods.

As a very uncanny Western example, it was only until very recently that the English-standard

system of measurements (which was in wide scale use among professional and contract

archaeologists in the United States) was replaced with the metric system to facilitate an easier 

translation with non-US based sources. Although they continue to be employed by both the US

 National Park Service and the US Forest Service for a majority of technical reports. Likewise,

Russian archaeologists had to adapt to a world that now used English as the Lingua Franca for 

international publications and discourse. According to Anatoli Kirpichnikov the prior generation

of archaeologists had learned German as a second language which is reflected in some of the

foreign language publications accepted in professional journals during the Soviet Period. Some

archaeologists working in Russia quickly adapted to the situation by producing English-Russian-

English dictionaries specifically for the field of archaeology (see the Chersonesos section

 below).

Thus, scientific and other academic subjects must absorb advances in their field to

continue to compete and produce viable results that can advance our understanding of that

 particular niche of knowledge. Not doing so, impedes that particular group ability to construct

 peer-accepted results as the neglect of certain technologies may leave out key sets of data, at the

very worst the data may be judged incompatible and disregarded. Beginning in 1992 the journal Soviet Archaeology was replaced with the journal Rossiiskaia Arkheologiia ( Russian

 Archaeology) which employed several organizational differences including; a list on contents in

 both in English and Russian as well as the acceptance of articles pertaining to a critique of the

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repression present in its predecessor 1 or the modern use of mass media to bring archaeology to

the mainstream2 (please see the journal section below for greater detail).

Since the end of the 1990s Russia has been steadily rebuilding its own independent form

of theory and methodology concerning the disciplines of archaeology and anthropology,

although development has been somewhat uneven as in the case studies of fieldwork described

 below. The effects of the rise in tourism and nationalism, as in all other states, continues to flexits muscle when using archaeology as a tool, but at the same time the archaeology of late has

 been able to fight back, on occasion, such as the repositioning of the Gazprom building due in

 part to the significance of the archaeological site below (Smirnova: 2010). Unfortunately, this

more quiet revolution and the works produced from it, have yet to catch the attention the larger 

international archaeological community.

A Survey of Current Collaboration 

During the previous periods understudy, attempts at an actual exchange of relevant data,

as well as genuine collaboration, were not as few and far between as previously thought. Thosemost noted in this study such as Dolitsky’s Siberian Paleolithic Archaeology: Approaches and 

 Analytic Methods and Davis’s Theoretical Issues in Contemporary Soviet Paleolithic

 Archaeology from the late Soviet Period attempted to bring to light the level of commonality and

 pursue a higher exchange of information. Both authors noted expressed their own limits in the

available publications at the time such as when which Davis concludes that; “the vast majority of 

these either synthesize regional data or examine particular well-known sites in detail, [while a

few] are decidedly critical… and often convey the desire for further contact” (Davis: 1983: 404).

Laughlin’s detailed account of a joint excavation in 1974 with Okladnikov offers one desired

exception to the rule which can lead as an example to follow in the current era. Upon completion

of the excavation mentioned above, both Okladnikov and Laughlin were flown to the Dry Creek 

site in Alaska (courtesy of the Department of the Interior), where a series of wedge-shaped cores

had been found and were similar enough to artifacts found in the 1930’s in Mongolia’s Gobi

desert to warrant a valid theory of interrelation (Laughlin: 1985: 785). Although based solely

upon artifact similarity, critical connections between instructions as well as governmental

support such as this example were vital to the credibility of the Bering Strait hypothesis in the

migration of the first Americans and to demonstrate, most explicitly, the need for continued

collaboration. 

The following section will examine whether or not cohabitation has fully developed

 between the West and Russia once the political barriers of the Cold war and economic hardships

on the 1990s have been removed. Important exchanges of students such as The Institute for theHistory of Material Culture of Russian Academy of Science’s endeavor to award eleven foreign

scholars with a Doctorate Honoris Causae, with two being from the US in 1999, since its ability

to do so began in the same year (Vasil’ev, S.: 2008) is part of an exchange program that could be

expanded.

Yet to truly evaluate the quality and quantity of collaboration and the exchange of 

methodology some of the key variables in the field of archaeology and anthropology need to be

reviewed more in-depthly than was done so in the past. Firstly, a few of those most dedicated

1 One example of this critique can be found in the article  Русские  Археологи и  Политические  Пепрессии 1920-

1940- х гг (“Russian Archaeologists and Political Repression of the 1920’s to the 1940’s”) by A.A Formozov, Rossiiskaia Arkheologiia, 1998, No.3, pp. 191-206.2 See Археологические  раскопки –  реалити-шоу? (“Archaeological excavations - a reality show?”) by M.S.

Hajiyev, Rossiiskaia Arkheologiia , 2009, No. 4, pp 271.

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actors involved in international projects have been interviewed to give a qualitative insight into

the condition of the field in terms of both: conflicting methodology and the exchange of 

information. Their personal assessment as well as actual achievement will be analyzed to assess

the quality and change of methodology and cooperation over the last twenty years.

Secondly, four journals known for their respected position in the field both as a forum for 

current methodology and as a medium for exchange of international information will besurveyed over a period of ten to twenty-five years, depending on the publication’s inception.

Two of the journals, American Antiquity and Current Anthropology are published in the US and

devote a considerable portion of their pages to the colonization of the New World a subject that

involves both nations. Two Russian journals,  Российская археология (Russian Archaeology,

 before 1992 the journal Soviet Archaeology will be used) and Sibirica:  Археология ,этнография и антропология  Евразии (Archeology Ethnography and Anthropology of Eurasia)

will be used to review current methodology in print as well as to quantify information pertaining

to the exchange and use of North American information on the topic of the New World

migration, the Alaskan Colonial Period, and acceptance of US authors into the published journal.

 Next, international conferences and seminars under the shared topics of: the Arctic,Alaska and Siberia relations and the aforementioned Paleoindian/Paleolithic migration will be

assessed in detail. These conferences will be quantified individually to evaluate the level of 

cooperation and exchange of information in their common interest among the papers presented

as well as their own fieldwork expeditions. In addition, a brief survey of recent independent or 

one-time projects involving these geographical locations and subjects will be discussed to

evaluate the inclusiveness of these projects with local experts.

And finally two recent and independent archaeological excavations within the CIS will be

appraised to determine actual methodology in-use as well as a qualitative assessment of 

international cooperation on archaeological excavations. To ensure independence, each project

 pertains to a different geographical location and archaeological time period as well as involving

two different sources of academic interest. Unfortunately, no similar North American projects

have been found in either the academic, enthusiast (amateur archaeological societies), or the

 private sector (Cultural Resource Management) to evaluate the inclusiveness of Russian

archaeologists and anthropologists beyond what has already been mentioned in the history of the

Soviet Period above. However, it must be noted that this absence of evidence is not proof of 

absence, and projects are likely to exist in the near-abroad Russian Colonial Period regions of 

Alaska, Hawai’i and the northwest continental United States.

While limited in scope, it is perceived that the sample taken in the publications and

experiences listed above will in some way aid in an up-to-date assessment of internationalcooperation between the two regions. The desire of a greater volume of exchange was openly

and widely expressed at the end of the Soviet Period, which was followed by an almost

unregulated influx of personnel and methodology in to the former USSR republics. It is the hope

of this assessment that the effects and condition of this exchange can be assessed in a

consequential manner.

Expert interviews on collaboration 

Expert knowledge offers a first-hand look and a qualitative account of the major topic

under discussion including past and present experiences in working with international

collaboration projects. While rarely utilized (Bogner, Littig and Menz: 2009: 1), it offers aunique perspective that adds insight through the years of knowledge, which in turn aids in

defining a situation such as the condition of collaboration described in this text. The three chosen

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experts in the field of archaeology represent three distinctly different points of contact and have

answered a series of qualitative designed questions to reflect upon their own experiences on the

subject. Each interview follows the guidelines for interviewing experts in  Interviewing Experts(Bogner, Littig and Menz: 2009). All case subjects understood that their oral and written answers

will be published in this document only.

Case 1

Dr. Sergey A Vasil’ev holds a Doctorate in Science and History and is currently the

Paleolithic Departmental Chair at the Institute of Material Culture ( PAH ) in St. Petersburg. He

also has over 30 years in experience and frequently publishes in both in English and Russian

concerning the Paleolithic/Paleoindian Period as well as in relation to collaboration between US

and Russian archaeologists1. He has also worked directly with leading American researchers

such as Ted Goebel on archaeological sites such as Ushki-1 in Siberia. Dr. Vasil’ev’s interview

concerned the two primary sub-topics of this paper; the fieldwork and collaboration in the past  and current international relations in an open-ended dialog. All answers were given verbally and

transcribed at the time of the interview on 1 November 20102.

Considering the time period in which he has worked, Dr. Vasil’ev provided a unique

insight into the condition of collaboration during this time as well as its process. In the first

open-ended section Dr. Vasil’ev stated that collaboration in the past is; “little known and very

few attempt to try to [research] the topic [because] emphasis is usually on the actual data of the

site” and not how it is acquired. Collaboration from the Soviet standpoint was desired, but not

always possible. Most scholars learned either French as in the case of Dr. Vasil’ev or German as

in the case of Dr. Ushakow below. While allowing for contact with several foreign sources of 

materials, this also blocked the use of the developing international value of English for Soviet

scholars. In turn this limited the level of exchange concerning US and Russian topics.

As a second consequence according to Vasil’ev (interview question 3), this linguistic

 barrier turned the attention in Paleolithic studies away from New World migration to earlier and

internal topics such as the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic transition. Cultural connections across

a greater area such as the connection to the New World were pursued by some who did break the

linguistic barrier, but these few encountered new problems when the differences in theory were

revealed. A connection was made from this direction to the West by publishing in journals after 

the perestroika in larger numbers. While these attempts were published and received in debate a

reciprocal exchange did not develop and new material published in Soviet/Russian journals did

not occur, primarily due to the lack of those that can use Russian (interview question 6).

Concerning the current level of cooperation in the past decade, Dr. Vasil'ev described itas; “difficult to ascertain” (interview question 1, second section), with the level of exchange at;

“roughly the same” (interview question 2, second section). Most of the current collaborative

 projects concern historical work in Alaska with some projects just beginning in the Russian Far 

East, interest in the latter topic has subsided somewhat, however the access to certain areas has

increased. As a result the projects are only lacking the necessary funds and the personnel to do

the work (interview question 3 and 5, second section). However, what was not stated here, but

has become evident through personal experience, is the lack of awareness that these projects

exist or are publicized internationally to gain support. Further acknowledgement and outreach

might in turn alleviate this particular problem.

1 See Vasil’ev; Let’s Dig Together , 2001.2

The actual hand-written answers are not included in this document, but are available for verification.

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Case 2

The second specialist interviewed on the subject of collaboration is Dr. Sergej Uschakow

who currently instructs at the University of Moscow and is the director of the Russian contingent

at the site of Chersonesos in the Crimea, Ukraine (see below for site description and the

collaboration project’s details). Dr. Uschakow was selected as an expert in the field of US is

Russian collaboration due to experience of the last decade with the Classical Department at theUniversity of Texas at Austin’s fieldwork seasons at the site. During several summer sessions

teams from both universities worked in close collaboration in nearby sections at the site. Dr.

Uschakow agreed to be interviewed concerning multinational projects and an oral interview was

conducted on 14 July 2010.

University fieldwork projects from US at the site had recently stopped in the last few

years and this was the major premise of the discussion. Dr. Uschakow cites a number of reasons

for the cease in US activity at the site, but he wished to preface his reply with the fact that he has

received some of this information second-hand. Firstly, the project was largely the child of a few

individuals (see below) and as the need for fieldwork had ceased (due to the time necessary to

 publish on the work and the processing of artifacts) it was not renewed as no replacement position was available. This was cited as the major reason for the end of the project (interview

question 1), but it was related to a number of other factors. This included the rising presence of 

local Ukrainian archaeologists who began to take on a greater role in the administration of the

site, the growing negativity towards the Russian contingent who was associated with this project

and a reduction in interested personnel from the US institution. One other visible factor not

mentioned was the political positioning of the archaeological field team at the extreme northern

end of the site. Concerning the relationship directly between Russian and Ukrainian

archaeologists, site placement was also a political factor and it had put a strain on this

relationship as well (interview question 3).

During the years that the US project was active there was an extensive exchange of 

information concerning the history of the site and related sites in the larger Mediterranean area.

Several large volumes of archaeological material, as an example, were donated to the site library,

although most were in English or Italian. However, what the excavation did not exchanged was

the personnel from the separate national excavation teams (interview question 4). Based upon

 personal recollection, there were no American students or volunteers that participated in the

Russian areas of the excavation as active field crew, however, a few did work in the same area of 

the finds laboratory. Likewise, many of the Russian students were only utilized as site liaisons

and translators. While insignificant at the time, this lack of interaction had an effect on the newer 

generation’s ability to build new relationships and contacts for the site.

Like Dr. Vasil’ev’s response above, Dr. Uschakow believes that collaboration, while still

 possible and desired, has generally stagnated over the last several years (interview question 5 and

6). As testament to this situation, the author of this text was the only person from the US at the

time of the 2010 excavation season. This again, was the result of a personal effort and not

through an international effort to connect, which is subject to the same vulnerabilities as any

contact based on a sole individual.

Case 3

The final specialist interviewed on the subject of collaboration will lead us into the next

section concerning the usage of collaboration in print. Mary Prasciunas is an AmericanPaleoindian specialist and researcher with the Paleoindian Database of the Americas, an

organization that seeks to catalog every possible site in this time period into one single, open-

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ended database based upon shared information. She also is affiliated with an American CRM

firm and has reviewed several books on the topic of the Paleoindian migration to the New World.

This interview was conducted as a series of printed questions via email in December 2010 and

January 20111.

Questions concerning collaboration between Russian and American sources were focused

on their use in published works. When asked directly about the inclusion of Russian sources anddata is US volumes, Dr. Prasciunas indicated that most books tend to focus on North America

and that it was unfortunate that more do not include data in at least the initial discussion

(Prasciunas: 2010). However, three suggestions were made that did contain some data on

Siberia.

Two of the three books were published within the last six years and the final book was

 published in 1998. In a following email it was asked, that give the recent dates of the books

listed, was it reasonable to say that including Russian data was a relatively recent phenomenon?

The answer was that there has always been a limited selection of available material for Russian

and that it has only been within the past few years that more data had became available

(Prasciunas: 2011). Furthermore, it was typical occurrence that many America authors do notinclude Russian sources or that many authors are unaware of how to acquire them (Prasciunas

reply: 2011).

While brief in length, Dr. Prasciunas has partially confirmed the enigma that faces many

American researchers studying this time period. Earlier works had little access or were largely

unaware of work concerning the Paleolithic in Russia and as a result published, unwilling or not,

on the topic without the full process included in the discussion. Consequently, enough time had

 passed that excluding Russian sources became an acceptable habit and this set precedence for 

further work. According to Dr. Prasciunas’ observation, it was only in the last few that this

 became unacceptable as it is now known that work is available from Russia (Prasciunas: reply:

2011). Along with the final case listed above, these specialists have momentarily demonstrated

that the exclusion of foreign sources has been more from a lack of personal effort to seek contact

that it has been from any external political force.

Reference and recognition in peer-reviewed journals

Examples of collaboration as well as the sharing of information must be manifested in

action as well as declaration. The four journals listed above provide an actual testament to the

level or US and Russian cross-referencing and collaboration, either in the field or publication.

Each journal has been chosen as a representative sample from the field of archaeology and has

the need as well as the possibility to include and publish the work of foreign authors andinternational projects.

The boundaries of the survey are restricted to the: collaborative projects, citations and the

works of authors/co-authors from either the United States or Russia published in the other nation

in either language. Works published by other nationalities (in either a nation or another 

language), while providing an example of international collaboration, and are beyond the scope

of the US/Russian parameters of this project. However, the presence of such, are on occasion,

mentioned as case-examples pertaining to the preference of certain nationalities over another 

(see below).

1 Dr. Prasciunas has asked that the actual emails not be made public but she is available for comment through the

Database’s website.

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In addition, each counted example in the table below must have the possibility to be

 published in the other nation’s journal, or in other words, the topic must be of relative interest to

the other party to be considered as a candidate. Topical interests include the afore mentioned

subject of the Late Paleolithic Era in relation to the Old-to-New World Migration, as well as: the

Russian Colonial Period in western North America, ethnographic studies in the other’s national

territory, Classical or other Historical Period works conducted either in collaboration or as a

single nation project with publication in the host nation’s journal and other examples cited intheir respective sections.

The search for needed criteria begins with a reading for relevant topics using the abstracts

and bibliographies for each article. Once an article has been chosen, it is then reviewed for 

collaborative sources. If a collaborative source has been located immediately, such with the

discovery of foreign author in the included sample or work cited in the bibliography it is marked

as being inclusive. If however, no immediate source has been found the article is fully examined

for relative sources. If none are found, it is marked as being non-inclusive. Regional articles such

as; individual site descriptions, artifact descriptions and other works that do not require

collaboration are recorded as a regional article and are not included in the final results. Only one

foreign source from the other nation is required to meet the criteria, other foreign sources are notsubject to be a qualifying agent.

It must also be noted that the journals chosen for this work, while reflexive of different

levels of international collaboration, should not be held under the same light. Each publication

has a slightly different set of criteria that qualifies it in relation to this survey. Russian journals,

as an example, are not bound by the same rule of the inclusion of Paleoindian data from North

America as US journals are for including Paleolithic data from Russia. The reason being is that

Eurasia is the sending location for the migratory population to North America, making events

and archaeological data independent of data in North America. Likewise, data pertaining to the

migration to  North America is dependant upon information and populations from Eurasia since it

is the receiving geographical location. Criteria for each publication section are therefore listed

separately.

The table below lists the five professionally reviewed journals are listed in the following

order:  American Antiquity (AA), Current Anthropology (CA), Rossiiskaia Arkheologiia (RA),

Soviet Archaeology (SA, the predecessor to RA), and the Sibirica journal Археология ,этнография и антропология  Евразии ( Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia,

or SB). The with bar indicates articles that have met the journals qualifying factors for 

collaboration and that have included information, authors, or reference from the other 

corresponding nationality by year. The w/o or the without likewise indicates the number that

have met the qualifications and have not been deemed collaborative. Totals have been given for each year as well as the total for each journal’s data set.

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AA 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

With 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 2 1 1 2 3

W/O 1 4 1 2 1 3 0 3 1 3 2 2 1 4 2 4 5 1 3 1 0 3 4 4 0

Total 1 4 2 2 2 4 0 3 1 3 2 2 2 5 2 5 5 1 4 1 2 4 5 6 3

CA 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

With 6 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 3 1 2 1 0 1 1 0 2 1 0 1 0 2 2 3 1

W/O 2 1 2 2 4 3 3 3 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 0 3 0 1 3 3 1 1 1 0

Total 8 1 2 2 4 4 4 4 3 4 2 1 0 2 1 0 5 1 1 4 3 2 3 4 1

RA 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

With 6 ? 6 3 2 1 2 0 5 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 1 1W/O 2 ? 1 2 2 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 2 0 0 0 1

Total 8 ? 7 5 4 1 2 0 6 0 1 1 0 4 2 0 0 1 2

SA 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

With 1 2 1 2 2 0 1

W/O 0 1 0 1 1 0 2

Total 1 3 1 3 3 0 3

SB 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

With 8 7 5 4 5 3 2 6 2 1 1

W/O 3 2 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1

Total 11 9 5 5 6 4 3 7 3 1 2

W W /O Total

AA 17 53 70

CA 31 34 65

RA 30 14 44

SA 9 5 14

SB 44 12 56

0

1

1

1

0

1

Table 1. The total number of journals by year that contain or are deficient in Russian/American data, authors, co-authors or subject matter on related topics (The Paleoindian/Paleolithic Period, indigenous North Americansettlement, Arctic anthropology, etc.). AA= American Antiquity, CA= Current Anthropology, RA= Russian Archaeology, SA= Soviet Archaeology and SB= Sibirica.

Again, the categorical sums of each journal should not be compared against another 

 journal as each publication meets a different set of criteria. However some general conclusions

can be derived. The first conclusion is that the two American journals, AA and CA contain a

higher number of journals that can include information from Russian sources (totaling 70 and 65

respectively), yet have a lower percentage of those that have include Russian information or 

authors (approximately 24% for  AA and 47% for CA). The higher volume in general can beexplained by the fact that Siberia is a dependant variable for most theories of migration to the

 New World and the historical colonization to Alaska. The lower percentage is, as it has been

explained above, more surprising given the necessity of Siberia as a host region and as a

consequence, a requirement for a valid scientific theory. Yet we must not over look the fact that

in recent times it has been more difficult to acquire certain published materials containing the

needed materials. According to the Russian Book section of the newspaper  Izvestia and the

 journal Rossiiskaia Arkheologiia, 85% of the books produced in the country are not received by

libraries in the survey year 2000 ( К  Читателям  Журнала “ Российская  Археология ,” ко  Всем  Археологам  России и СНГ  / To the Readers of “Russian Archaeology” and to all the

archaeologists of Russia, Open Letter from the Journal Editorial Board: 2000: 253-254). Also of 

note, is that each quarterly issue of  RA or SA has listed the exact volume published for thatedition, which averages between 3,000 and 4,000 issues. This number, before the sharing quality

of the internet, would have not have been easy to acquire outside of a subscription to the journal.

However, beginning in the same year the journal Sibirica began a full publication of its journal

in English, which argues that the source rather than the quantity of material has changed.

Secondly, the Russian journals have a lower overall volume of articles pertaining to a

common interest (58 for  RA and SA combined and 56 for SB), which again is expected as the

main topic is not a dependant variable for inquiry into the time period. Yet, each had a higher 

 percentage of inclusive articles (67% for  RA and SA combined and 78% for SB), which is far 

greater a percentage in inclusiveness to warrant further explanation (see below). It is thus

interesting to surmise that despite the point that work conducted in the Eurasian Paleolithic doesnot require information from the New World to produce a valid theory for human activities,

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including migration. Nevertheless, as the results will indicate the authors and their subsequent

archaeological sites/materials, independent of Russia or not, were still presented for publication.

 American Antiquity

The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) is the parent organization for the American

 Antiquity which began publishing in 1935. Its sister publication  Latin American Antiquity, whichfocuses on work in Central and South America, began in 19901. The formal publication is

considered to be one of the most respected journals for North American archaeology and has

included articles pertaining to the initial colonization of the New World since its inception giving

it the higher overall volume on the topic.

The years 1985 through 2010 (for both of the American journals) have been chosen as a

representative sample for a number of reasons. Firstly, this period of American archaeology as

seen an exponential rise in the number of archeological investigations in general, due largely to

the inclusion of professional archaeology or Cultural Resource Management (CRM) mentioned

above. As a result the number of finds pertaining to the Paleoindian has also increased.

Secondly, 1985 marks a significant change in Soviet/American relations that would presumablyallow for a greater exchange of scientific data on a more equal level, followed by the changes

over the last two decades described in the previous section.

According to the information provided, AA is not a significant source of collaborative

 projects despite its higher status among American archaeologists. Although the number of actual

qualifying articles has never exceeded six for the entire year, articles on regional topics number 

 between one and fifteen for one full year. The emphasis of this journal has therefore been on the

reporting of individual sites in regional isolation which abstain from attaching themselves to

larger theorhetorical models on colonization. Processual approaches, calibrated carbon-14

dating and association to nearby sites also deemed to be of the Paleoindian Period are more often

utilized to establish a particular site’s relevance in this period than a direct comparison to Old

World data. In addition, of the 17 articles that did use data pertaining to eastern Eurasia, 6

utilized only one particular source, Kostenki to Clovis, which was edited by the American and

Russian’s Olga Soffer and N.D. Praslov published in English in 1993. Two additional articles

contained this publication as well as one other.

The year 2000 marks a significant spike in the number of articles pertaining to this topic.

It was first perceived to be perhaps a thematic year with regard to the turn of the millennium or 

with the 1000th anniversary of the first European discovery of the Americas at the Norse site of 

 L’Anse aux Meadows. However, what became apparent upon the full examination of each article

is the fact that this particular year was the height of the  Kennewick Man controversy described previously in greater detail. Since the specimen in question revolved around a further 

explanation on the source of the individual it is of no surprise that the hot topic was reflected in

the quantity of articles pertaining directly to the prehistoric connection between the Old and New

Worlds. Yet, only one article of this year actually carried information from a Russian source.

This fact, that a human specimen of a perceived Old World origin comes under question,

receives so few sources from the suggested source became a major argument in the book  Bones 

cited above as well as the primary inspiration for this work.

While not considered as relevant material, it must be noted that several articles do in fact

use other foreign sources in general when discussing the European Paleolithic and colonization

during the recent historical period. Sources from Canada, the UK, France and Germany are the

1See www.saa.org for the complete society charter and further information pertaining to the journals mentioned.

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most often source of foreign authors and cited publications in the same order. This point does,

however, indicate some preference for readable material in English and other nations with well

established academic links.

Finally, the recent increase in material pertaining to the Paleoindian Period and its

relationship to Eurasia, beginning about 2006, has not been seen as an effect of one particular 

incident. Work in this period display a wide variety of topics ranging from individual sites thatdo make an attempt to include Eurasian data to debates pertaining to the theory itself. The reason

for this change deserves a future investigation as it may be the result an increase in the

availability of material of information from Russia, or from a greater generational transition of 

archaeologists that are less familiar with the Cold War stigma described above. The true trend of 

these past few years remains unclear at this point.

Current Anthropology

The non-profit Wenner-Gren foundation is the primary sponsor of the journal Current  Anthropology, which is published four to five times per year by the University of Chicago Press.

It was founded in 1959 by the late anthropologist Sol Tax, and is one of the few journals that publish from professionals in all the sub-disciplines of anthropology1and thus chosen for this

reason.

CA contains a much higher proportion of published material from Russian based authors

 pertaining to the field of Paleolithic/Paleoindian archaeology as well as works pertaining to the

 Russian American Company and the colonization of Alaska (approximately 47%), much of 

which predates the range of this collaborative survey (see the above section for a description of 

the selected period, 1985-2010). Several native Russian authors that work with the east Eurasian

Paleolithic or contemporary Russian anthropology such as Sergey Vasil’ev, Alexander Dolitsky

and Valery Tishkov have published multiple articles in this journal as well as several others cited

as co-authors or sources.

It cannot, however, be compared directly with the AA journal described above. AA works

 primarily with work conducted on North America, while CA includes material from throughout

the world. American Paleolithic experts that work with Eurasian sites are more likely to publish

in this or another journal that has a higher ratio for foreign to domestic sites rather than a journal

that is largely restricted to North American material. This preference is therefore reflected in the

higher number of articles with collaborative materials in this publication. It is reasonably

assumed that since American researchers working abroad will have some contact with local

scholars, that the recommended journal for their Russian contacts will be one that is already

accustomed to both the American author as well as the inclusion of other foreign works.

The total numbers do not reach a high percentage pertaining to the selected criteria of 

topics, yet given that this particular publication distributes information on such a wide array of 

sub-disciplines, its numbers are significant. Accordingly what can be seen is the more balanced

number of inclusive articles in relationship to the total. Whether or not this relative increase is a

 product of personal contacts or not remains unclear.

 Rossiiskaia Arkheologiia and Soviet Archaeology 

 Rossiiskaia Arkheologiia ( RA) began publication in 1992 as a continuation of the

 preceding journal, Soviet Archaeology (hereafter SA which had its debut in 1957) and is thereforelisted as one source. It was founded by Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Archaeology 

1See www.wennergren.org for a full description of the journals history.

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(RAS). The journal publishes four volumes a year in Moscow with the international academic

 publishing company, Nauka Interperiodica1. This journal is similar in position to American

 Antiquity and considered the central periodical of the Russian Federation. The journal accepts

articles from all fields and periods in archaeology, but not other sub-disciplines such as physical

anthropology or ethnology.

As a result, the specific criteria are again, somewhat different than for the publicationsmentioned above. The parameters of this survey are delineated by projects and articles

concerning the US and Russia only, the inclusion of other foreign sources and authors was

 prohibited. In addition, articles counted in this survey as being inclusive by: containing at least

one source from the US on its related subject, an author or co-author from the US, or mention the

inclusion of a US foreign source in the body of the article. Certain publications that were by a

Russian author only, but pertained directly to a US site or other piece of work were also

included. Examples of this final point may include general overviews of work conducted in a

 particular field or location. No book reviews were included, despite the origin, to maintain

consistency with the periodicals listed above.

Like the AA, these two publications have accepted a limited number of foreign publications in general. Between 1985 and 1991 SA published only 14 journals in the criteria

mentioned, yet 9 of the 14 that were included did have foreign sources listed. SA did not publish

any material pertaining to the Russian Colonial Period in North America or Hawai’i in the years

that were under review. 3 of the 14 articles gave general overviews of work conducted in North

America as a whole including projects in Central America and Mexico. Concerning the

 prehistoric migration to the New World, no articles dealing directly with work related to this

topic from North America were found. The remainder of the articles found to be inclusive

 pertained to Classical work in Europe, particular the eastern Mediterranean area that was

directed or written by a US researcher. Although the period understudy is generally believed to

represent the most open period of cooperation between Soviet and American archaeologists, its

overall number of collaborative works remains quite low. It will be interesting to see if this trend

is consistent once the publication has been reviewed in its entirety.

The Russian scion of the Soviet publication described above went through several

fundamental changes besides the renaming of its title. This included and general increase in the

number of foreign articles that met the criteria in the immediate years following the collapse of 

the Soviet Union as well as an English table of contents published adjacent to the Russian

version in each volume. Interestingly enough, the number of inclusive articles plummeted in

1997 and except for the year 2000, it did not begin to add more to these numbers until the latter 

half of the last decade, all of which may be reflective of political tensions between the two

nations at the time.

Yet, both publications have never wholly excluded the work of foreign archaeologists and

have on occasion honored their life’s work along with their own, such as in the review of The Archaeology of Greek Colonization: Essays dedicated to Sir John Boardman2. Thus while some

 publication volumes contained no works that met the given criteria, they would have at least one

foreign source per issue. Overall, the percentage of volumes that both met the criteria and were

inclusive remains above 50%, despite the amount of relevant articles that can be accepted in any

number of languages and regions from Europe, North America and Asia.

1See the official website: http://archaeolog.ru for a complete biography.

2 Reviewed by L.P. Marinovich and G.A. Koshelenko, Rossiiskaia Arkheologiia, 1997, No. 2. Book published by

Oxford Press, 1994.

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Sibirica

The journal   Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia (Археология,

этнография  и  антропология Евразии) is published on behalf of the Siberian Branch of the

Russian Academy of Sciences located in Novosibirsk. It debuted only ten years ago, but with the

founding intent to be published in both Russian and English. Each linguistic version is published

separately and contains the following topics: quaternary geology, Pleistocene and Holocene paleoecology, the Methodology of archaeological, anthropological and ethnographical research

(including field and laboratory study techniques), early human migrations, physical

anthropology, among several other specialties. The journal also publishes results of field

investigations conducted by archaeologists, anthropologists, and ethnologists, and

announcements of symposia and professional meetings.

Although it covers a wide variety of topics, its main geographical focus in on the greater 

geographical region of Siberia and surrounding regions such as: northern China, Korea, Japan

and northwestern North America. Articles from authors located in all the named regions have

 been accepted for publication with translations offered for both language versions. Likewise the

  journal contains a high percentage of collaborative works (78.5%) many of which are only a percentage of other publications from other international works. However in the recent 2-3 years

regional reports and investigations from Russia have exceeded the volume of work from other 

sources, which is visible in the overall lower numbers from this time.

Given its stated intent and short publishing history little else can be said concerning this

  publication. While available in print at most major libraries and institutions, several of the

contents are missing on the journal’s own website making it difficult to request additional

information for foreign researchers who are not able to travel to Russia. However these

discrepancies are easily mended. Only an increase in journal distribution and availability can

increase the collaborative root of this periodical.

To conclude, while each of one of these four journals represent a different angle in how

data can be exchanged, they do highlight one common argument. The American journals have

developed an acceptable format for describing migration to the New World and other topics

 pertaining to Russia that can exclude it as a source. Like the interviews listed above confirm, this

is largely a product of habit that has become an industry practice. Likewise, Russian journals

have been much more inclusive, but availability remains limited and is not pronounced. Each

group has therefore held a separate piece to the puzzle, leaving the possibility for a stronger 

 picture of the past incomplete.

Co-acting in conference

The congregation of like-minded researchers in an international setting is another 

essential factor in the exchange of vital information and the building of foundations for future

collaboration. As it has been shown in the historical section above, international conferences and

seminars did exist throughout the Soviet Period. Naturally with the new found atmosphere of 

open cooperation at the political level in the early 1990s, it was expected that a higher level of 

exchange could be achieved. Despite the on-going struggle in ideology that faced the field of 

archaeology in the early 1990s several archaeologists from both countries made an effort to both

visit the other nation as well as express their desire for further cooperation such as Sergey

Vasil’ev’s paper to the 25th Fulbright Annual Conference;   Dialog of Cultures: Fulbright 

Contributors entitled; Let's Dig Together: Problems and Perspectives in Collaborative Russian- American Archaeological Studies. Vasil’ev not only expresses the critical importance of work in

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the territory of Russia being critical to the study of early humans, but also the possibility of 

overcoming the methodological differences described above (Vasil’ev: 2002).

The overall increase in international archaeological conferences that actually began in the

late 1990s included such conferences as; The First English-Russian Archaeological Seminar:

 Problems of Fixation in Archaeology held in 1997 (Зиливинская, Э.Д./Zilivinskaja, E.D.: 1998:

239) and the French-Russian Co-operation in the Field of Early Medieval Archaeology of 1999and the follow up seminar in 2001 (Мастыкова, А.В./Mastykova, A. V.: 1999: pp.241,

Афанасьев, Г.Е. и А.В. Мастыкова/Afans’ev, G. E. and A.V. Mastykova: 2001: pp.180). And

American and Russian joint conferences began soon after according to Tikhonov; “Since 2004,

U.S. and Russian collaborators have held joint conferences and conducted minor archaeological

field investigations at sites in south central Siberia in an attempt to better understand the sources

of material culture in colonial Russian America” (Tikhonov abstract: 2009).

In the above citation V. Tikhonov touches upon a unique and growing field of mutual

interest in the field of archaeology and anthropology that is set apart from the more general areas

of research mentioned in this paper, the modern exploration and colonization of Alaska by the St.

Petersburg based Russian American Company. The topic of Russia’s presence in the New World(including a trading fort in Hawai’i) has become a subject of increasing interest for both

countries.

One of several such conferences, The International Conference on Russian America 

 began in 2005 to bring together specialists and the public to discuss a variety of topics

concerning Russia’s presence in the Americas. It was recognized by some of the participants

such as Sonja Luehrmann that was a discrepancy between Russian and American ethnology

when she said that; “Soviet ethnographers have seldom been read, at least in English-language

literature, as thinking people who were not only maintaining complex relations of negotiation,

evasion, collaboration, or resistance with political institutions but also addressing sophisticated

questions about human society (Luehrmann: 2005: 852).

In 2010 this included; 42 American, 23 Russian and one each from Canada, Sweden,

Denmark, and the Kenaitze and Tlingit tribes which presented on a variety of topics that ranged

from Maria Jarlsdotter Enckell’s In Search of a People Lost: the Finns in Russian America and their Descendants to How the Fort Ross Club keeps Russian America Alive in Irkutsk presented

 by members of the club from Russian Irkutsk. Local inhabitants from Sitka, Alaska (where the

conference was located) brought the public into the conference through a variety of events that

included dress in stylized Russian costumes from the late 19th Century (see Figure 13) as well as

hosting a variety of workshops intended to increase the local population’s awareness on the

history of the area. Yet this conference and other similar examples like it represent the stronger side of the effort to engage in direct dialog and exchange information and it should not be seen

as characteristic of the current type of collaboration in the professional field. The Russian

American conference has drawn on the growing move to explore one’s genealogical heritage that

has recently become a phenomenon in North America (Nash: 2002) to enhance a greater interest

in this field. This interest is subject to certain limitations of time as it must have a population in

the present that can, at the very least through myth and local legend, establish a link with a

chosen founding population1. Therefore it is only a select group of historical groups that can

draw upon this greater interest.

1 An interesting and well studied example of this type of cultural heritage can be seen in the state of Minnesota,

USA which has a high Swedish population dating to the mid 19th Century. However, many in the area believe thatVikings originally explored the area and left behind burial mounds and other landmarks which were later attributedto the local Native American population. See Constructing an Ethnic Identity: The case of the Swedish-Americans 

 by Dag Blanck, Associated University P., 1989.

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The Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research which is entering into its 41st year of inquiry

uses a more traditional method of collaboration. The institute, based at the University of 

Colorado at Boulder, invites research from across North America and Europe to present on

topics ranging from environmental impact to the Paleolithic. The institute meets at the annual

 International Arctic Workshop which was held at Winter Park, Colorado in 2010 and while the

topics encompass the whole of the Arctic region there were only three Russian topic papers (twoRussian presenters and one Russian co-author) out of 89 presentations/papers. Similar results can

 be found at the Arctic Polar Society’s annual conference which had only one paper on the

continental shelf of Siberia by a former US Navy Captain and zero from a Russian source or 

author and the 17 th

Annual Arctic Conference (also located in Colorado in 2009) which had only

three Russian topic papers (one Russian author and two collaboration papers)1.

While these examples do not attempt to represent the entirety of conferences pertaining to

Russian and American shared scientific interests, it is believed that the certain characteristics that

manifest in conferences of this type can be underscored by the type of collaboration that they

represent. Firstly, collaboration seems to be largely enhanced based on the particular groups

ability to access public interest. Popularity not only enhances the conference’s prestige inattendance, but it increases its publicity through word of mouth creating a cyclic affect on

growth. The Russian American conference has a narrow topical field in history yet the number of 

attendants and presenters is significantly greater that those in the latter category.

The conferences pertaining to the broader topic of the Arctic in general, which appear to

 be more inclusive and open to international support, actually offer less in terms of international

cooperation. This is due in part to the lack of a hot-topic such as the genealogical interest in the

example given above, which inhibits a genuine interest by the local population. This is not to say

that that the location of the latter conferences are poorly placed or are too far removed from the

 public, but rather that interest in the subject is merely projected at those who are already

interested in the subject at a local level. The majority of the researchers listed in the abstracts

 provided from these conferences are from regional institutions and American universities which

unconsciously excludes international exchange. Calls for papers which not listed in other 

languages and awareness that is limited to announcements in the institutions that are already

apart of the organization represent a small portion of the problem, which again, may be the result

of habit. It is not the intent of this author to say that a conference which is based on the idea on

an exchange between professionals should dilute its content to make it more palatable to the lay,

 but rather it is the duty of those that research the field in a labeled international setting, to make

it fully available to that same audience.

An assessment of methodology in the field

While the survey of written material offers a very in-depth assessment of collaboration in

 print, the direct appraisal of actual collaboration in fieldwork can measure the quality of this

exchange beyond what has been edited on paper. Two notably different archaeological

excavations were assessed to better understand the methodology in use by active researchers in

the Russian Academy of Sciences. Each project is located in a different geographical and

environmental setting and their focus, while both existing in the historical era, concentrate on a

different time period and cultural complex. Both projects were directed by a full member of the

Academy of Sciences and supervised by a doctoral student under their guidance.

1This included the following papers on the Kuril Island and Siberian DNA comparisons, new 14C dates for the site

of Ushki-1 by Ted Goebel and one paper on the material culture of Russian America and Central Siberia by A.

Tikhonov.

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The analysis of field excavation methodology will involve the specific use of the several

site and laboratory criteria. On-site assessments will look at the actual removal of the

archaeological matrix (soil and features) as well as the chosen incremental withdrawal of each

layer or context, either by an arbitrary level such as ten centimeters or by feature and/or cultural

layer. Individual artifact and feature exposure will be discussed to evaluate the type of plotting

and recording in use as well as how they are contained, removed or discarded. Personnel

management and distribution is also critical, especially when involving the use of hired or student labor, and will be evaluated from the view of a participant observer.

Laboratory assessments involve the curation of individual artifacts as well as the methods

of documentation in use such as photography or manual drawing. The latter form of visual

documentation, while in use at both locations, will be compared in terms of intended use and the

chosen method of rendition (artistic or scale drawing). One professional artifact recorder, Olga

Blinova, who was present at both locations during the time of study, was interviewed regarding

the specific artistic technique employed and their uses as a scientific instrument or otherwise.

Finally, the local and national political use of the archaeological site will be discussed.

Both locations are located in populated areas and provide a source of income as a tourist and/or religious destination. In addition, both sites have a greater political use as a national symbol to

the host nation and are considered as a key to the founding myth of each modern nation-state’s

greater sense of identity. In the unique case of Crimea, which is now within the nation of 

Ukraine, yet still largely populated and operated by ethnic and national Russians, will be

 presented in the very unique sense of a modern colonial archaeological project (Kohl: 1998: 233)

with respect to the Russian population majority present in another country.

Staraya Ladoga

The site of Staraya or Old Ladoga is located on the left bank of the Volkhov River where

it meets the smaller, unnavigable Ladozhka River and it is twelve kilometers south of the river’s

mouth into Lake Ladoga. At this intersection are the remains of a settlement from the seventh

and eight centuries, overlaid and largely destroyed by a stone fortress from the twelfth century,

with additional ramparts added in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. During the earlier period

Ladoga was a small village of early Slavic peoples migrating mostly from the south along the

river system. In the latter period Ladoga became a center of international trade and localized

craft productions. A cataract, or point of turbulent waters, once existed at this point in the rivers

forcing local traders to make a small land portage to avoid them which in turn aided in the

development of trade for the region. Artifacts from the north and east such as Baltic amber and

metals forged in Scandinavia (also known as Varangians) have been found in the same cultural

layers as Bishopric seals from Kiev and a variety of items from the Ottoman Empire, includingcoins. Mapping of the standing fortress began as early as 1896 with intermittent excavations

 beginning about 1911 (Mongait: 1961: 294) to the present day. 

Research conducting concerning the methodology in the field was carried out for a period

of two summer field seasons (July to August) in 2005 and 2006. Both seasons involved field

work on the southern side of the fortress in the Zemlyanoe, or earthen town which formed part of 

the old town adjacent to the kremlin under the direction of Dr. Anatoli Kirpichnikov and

supervised by Dr. Adrian Selin from the Institute for the History of Material Culture of Russian

Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.

The area under excavations was an open air 15x15 meter square and by the 2005 seasonhad been excavated to a depth of seven to eight meters below the surface depending on the

surface topography. Previous seasons of field work removed one to two meters of matrix per 

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season. At the end of each season the excavation trench was left open and covered by a layer of 

 previously removed soil of a thickness no greater than 25 centimeters. The soil consisted of a

fine-grained silt to a silty-loam, dark gray to black in color which was deposited by intermittent

fluvial discharges of varying thickness. It is unknown if these were annual fluvial depositions or 

sporadic events. The soiled was highly compacted because of these and therefore gave a high

rate of preservation of organic and metallic materials due to the lack of oxygen. This rate of 

high-preservation is one of the reasons that the site has been excavated to such an extended period of time, giving it a wealth of artifacts which is uncharacteristic of most archaeological

sites in this region. In 2006 a new section of similar size was opened adjacent to the previous

area described above and excavations began from the surface during this season.

The actual removal of soils and the exposure of its subsequent artifacts and features at

Staraya Ladoga followed the traditional artifactual and economic orientation theory employed

during the greater Soviet Period known as the horizontal method (Bulkin et al .: 1982: 289)

which seeks to expose all artifacts and features in a given layer regardless of differing

chronological orientation. An example of this type of layout is seen in the photograph Figure 6

where multiple features are seen in relation to each other in one level.

This type of methodology has its advantages and disadvantages. If the exposed

archaeological features in a given layer are discovered to be of the same time period they can

show an interesting correlation between structures. For example, during this excavation I was

able to expose a single floor level of a small structure that had been destroyed during a single-

event fire. When exposed, the several artifacts were found in-situ at the time of the event,

including a cooking vessel that had fallen off the lower stones of the hearth and broken along the

floor. As the floor was soon buried by the collapsing roof during the fire, the actual break-pattern

of the ceramic pot remained intact. This one-time catastrophic event could not have been seen as

such and perhaps missed altogether if it was excavated using another method. However, if 

nearby structures are not related, such as one housing structure being of a considerable different

time but on the same level as another, it can give a false sense of the layout of the archaeological

site when seen together. During these excavation cycles, several overlapping structures were

exposed and the upper structures were thus removed before their relationship to lower levels

could be fully understood. According to my colleagues at the excavation site this discrepancy

can be easily remedied by the continual construction of level-based maps that can be overlain to

how the continuity or discontinuity of certain cultural layers. However true this may be, it does

not take away the risk of the premature removal of overlapping structures to expose the base

structure at a particular level. Furthermore the inexperience of students and volunteers, which are

the primary source of labor for most academic projects, may not be able to distinguish one level

from another.

The current use of the Harris Matrix model (Harris: 1989) in Europe as in the Crimean

example discussed below avoids this paradox by fully excavating a single feature in its entirety.

As seen in Figure 7 of an excavation of a late Bronze Age settlement in Somerset, England, each

individual feature (in this case the circular holes are subterranean food storage pits) is completely

exposed and reveals the entire shape in its former use period. This method involves a great deal

more control in the complexity of the site. While exposing multiple features in a single layer,

each newly exposed feature is excavated regardless of the depths that it may reach to expose it.

As each feature or artifact is finished and mapped, it is only then that it is removed to expose the

layer below, which in many cases was already partially exposed at a higher adjacent elevation. In

some ways this resembles an onion that is first sliced in half to depiction the location of each

layer and then removing each layer of the onion independently as it exposed. The inexperienceof students is also somewhat tempered in that each individual is restricted to one level at any one

time.

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original stones found at the base of the walls with the use of modern concrete to stabilize the

structure. The recent reconstruction, which began after the 2006 excavations, cover much of the

original walls and structures and complete the perceived look of the original structure. This

complete reconstruction is highly unusual for a recognized archaeological site. Besides giving

visitors a false sense of what actually exists (See Figure 4) it also can damage the original

structure. It is therefore common practice to leave, yet stabilize, the structure in its original  found 

condition rather than to alter it for an esthetic value. It must also be suggested here as a matter of ethical concern, that the damage done to future interpretations and analysis because of these

actions are equivalent to standing the fallen stones at Stonehenge or recovering the Great

Pyramid at Cheops and will thus serve to only damage the reputation of the site as a legitimate

historical marker in the years to come.

Collaboration at this particular project has been very limited concerning foreigners

outside of the CIS block of nations. During the 2005 season I was the sole American researcher 

at the project. One other foreign volunteer from Spain, also working at the nearby monastery,

worked intermittently at the site for one week. At the end of the first season it was recommended

that I bring a small group of American volunteers for the next field season in 2006. One

experienced seasonal volunteer from Florida and one student undergraduate student from theUniversity of Oregon responded to my announcement in the Archaeological Fiel d work 

Opportunities Bulletin (AFOB) published by Archaeological Institute of America1. According to

Dr. Kirpichnikov, this was the first group of volunteers to work at the site under his tenure. One

other American was invited several years ago by Dr. Kirpichnikov, but later refused to attend.

The analysis of the methodology in-place at Staraya Ladoga can be best described as

transitional in respect to the Soviet methods mentioned above and the other site methodologies

described below. Past approaches which avoided a comprehensive collection of flora and faunal

materials and the rejection of digital imaging or positioning systems are still in-place as recent as

2010 season. The method in use at Staraya Ladoga largely remained unchanged since the 1960s

under Dr. Kirpichnikov’s tenure as it was described at other sites under his direction, including

the kremlin at Shlisselburg on the headwaters of the Neva. The additional use of digital

surveying equipment such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) device was not in use by the

excavation team. Conservative overtures relevant to the age of individuals has been considered

inapplicable in this situation as many of the site supervisors and directors are recent graduates

and employed modern techniques such as artifact photography, while limited to key finds, are

conducted by the senior staff. What is presented to explain the somewhat dated techniques

employed at Staraya Ladoga is the function of the site as an economical and political tool.

Historical reconstruction is hastily done to improve the overall impressiveness of the site by

cloaking the original condition of the standing structure under modern concrete. Similar regional

sites at or near kremlin structures such as at Pskov (see Figure 8), while not as impressive as astanding and roofed structure, serve to stabilize archaeological features in their original found

condition (Ershova/Ершова et al.: 2006). It is suggested that the increased presence of the

structure major function is to drive the sites ability to function as a source of increased revenue

for the village.

In addition, the improved condition and volume of the local hotels and cafes in the region

has been noted between the excavations in 2006 and the return visit in 2010. While always

serving as a minor religious pilgrimage2, the new facilities and the organized tours of foreign

guests from St. Petersburg have brought increased numbers of tourists who, unlike before, are

1See Archaeological Fieldwork Opportunities Bulletin, 2006, edited by V. Lord and K. Mullen.

2 The 12th Century church of St. George has been a wedding day pilgrimage site since at least the second half of the

19th

Century.

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residing in the village for more than one day1. Simply put, low level ruins provide less of an

attraction than a fully functional and accessible castle.

The use of Staraya Ladoga as a political tool have made quite apparent in the recent

 presentation of artifacts to the state Duma by Kirpichnikov in February 2010. Over 200 artifacts

and an annual report were presented to the Duma of which some were actually handled and worn

 by attendants such as a pair of earrings allegedly worn by the wife of Rurik 2

. Unprovenassociations such as the earrings and their association with the historical ruling elite are

reminiscent of similar allegations made by Heinrich Schliemann and the artifacts associated with

Priam’s treasure excavated between 1871 and 1873 at the ancient site of Troy. Schliemann

received and continues to receive criticism for the mishandling of artifacts when he allowed his

wife Sophia to wear some of the discovered jewelry. In other words, the recent actions of these

highly publicized presentations by a leading scholar only serve to highlight the reciprocal

relationship between noted sites of origin (as described by Kohl above) and their sponsoring

state. The presented artifacts of a former Russian ruler in the State Duma of the Russian

Federation act as a visible link between the past and present rulers of the state. In exchange, the

excavation at Staraya Ladoga will continue to receive the necessary funds to keep the site

operational as well as to retain its needed staff.

Chersonesos

The ancient settlement of Chersonesos Taurica (in Russian: Херсонес Таврический) is

located on the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine. It was initially settled by Greek colonists

from Heraclea Pontica in the 5th Century B.C. followed by its incorporation as a Roman

 provincial city, a Byzantine trade center before finally suffering defeat in the 13th century A.D.

(Carter and Mack: 2003). Unlike many Byzantine and earlier settlements a large portion of the

central site district has remained free of future settlements since the 14th Century A.D., including

the founding of Sevastopol at a nearby harbor in 1783. For much of the Soviet Period it was

closed to foreign visitors due to its close proximity to the headquarters of the Soviet Black Sea

Fleet, which still can be seen in the nearby harbor.

Excavations began as early as 1827 and have continued to the present day, excluding

disruptions during times of conflict3. Current fieldwork conducted at the site stems from a

variety of sources including projects from Poland, Russia as well as local Ukrainian university

 programs. Dr. Sergej Uschakow from Moscow State University is the current director of the

Russian contingent and work in primarily conducted at the extreme southern point of the site,

southwest of St. Vladimir’s cathedral. The analysis of fieldwork methodology took place during

the summer field season in July and August of 2010.

Early Roman and Late Greek Period levels, which were overlain with portions of a small

Byzantine chapel, were the focus of this years excavation work. Several bedrock-cut burial

sarcophagi intruded into lower level Roman housing foundations and an earlier Greek Period

road that bisected the site at a southeast to northwest axis. The excavation are also included a 10-

meter deep well that was excavated to its bottom cultural fill layers. Figure 9 shows a portion of 

the excavation concerning one of the burial sarcophagi (burial 16-A) cut into the lower bedrock 

layers as well as a profile of the Greek Period cobblestone road.

1 See the website http://wikitravel.org/en/Staraya_Ladoga for more detailed travel statistics.2 For a picture depicting the earrings in question as well as an online article covering the event please see:http://www.rg.ru/2010/02/25/reg-szapad/kirpichnikov.html.3 A full chronology of excavations is available at: www.chersonesos.org, a website sponsored by the Institute of 

Classical Archaeology (ICA) from the University of Texas at Austin.

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A description of the methodology in use at Chersonesos involves a combination of the

 Harris matrix method described above and the use of separate 2x2 meter excavation units. Each

excavation unit is segregated from adjacent units by a 1 meter barrier of unexcavated matrix.

This barrier serves two functions. Firstly, it allows for an ongoing profile image of the strata

under excavation in each facing cardinal direction. This serves as an ongoing guide to the current

level under removal as well as showing the distinct differentiation between levels for a better 

comparison. The four recorded profiles allow for an extrapolated 3D model of the unit wholematrices. Secondly, the barrier will serve as a preserved sample which can be utilized as a

comparative sample for future work in the area, in addition to its function as a convenient

walkway. Metal detecting was conducted in a similar fashion to the methods at Staraya Ladoga

except for artifacts found deep within a context were pin-flagged for a later removal rather than

an immediate removal for the artifact from an undisturbed context.

Removal of the matrix by individual context facilitated the understanding of the complex

stratigraphy of the site. Unlike Staraya Ladoga, which was buried by intermittent and distinct

flood-level depositions, Chersonesos stratigraphy was undercut and redeposited several times by

several overlapping cultural complexes. In the 2x2 meter sections each cultural episode could be

exposed in its entirety as well as showing what it intruded upon or what intruded it. The cross-cutting of distinct layer could then be collaborated by the thorough collection of ceramic shards,

regardless of the quality and style of the individual sherds. A comprehensive collection of 

artifact specimens, rather than a selective sample based upon its uniqueness greatly added to the

history of the site in several ways. Rather than simple adding to the already known facts of who 

was here and when (which is already well documented) the relationship of the ceramic

components allowed for theories to develop on how the area in question was used. Concerning

the relationship between the Byzantine layers and the lower Roman levels for example,

information about how the Byzantine workers chose this particular site for the construction of a

small cathedral can be extracted. No prior known religious structure, which was often

intentionally recovered by a Christian structure, was found in this location. Which begs the

question why this location (which is on top of a small side roadway) was chosen and not another.

Questions such as this example demonstrates can only be drawn and answered by the collection

of all found objects, not just examples which correlate with existing historical events and figures.

Artifact analysis and curation are considerably different than at Staraya Ladoga. All

artifacts are processed, examined and curated in the on-site facilities, a fifteen minute walk on-

foot from the excavation site. Due to the near Mediterranean climate of the north Black Sea

region the archaeological site is able to remain open on a year-round basis and support a small

staff of full-time museum curators. All found objects are plotted and mapped upon discovery and

 placed in transportation boxes, with the smaller, more significant finds in separate plastic bags.

Twice per day the artifacts are collected and transported to the laboratory for initial cleaning andidentification.

All diagnostic pottery fragments (rim and base sherds) are illustrated according to the

guidelines and methods developed by the Association of Archaeological Illustrators &

Surveyors1 which include plan and profile images of each artifact on a comparable scale (See

Figure 10, Blinova: 2010: 3-4). Detailed measurements with precision calipers as well as scaled

 photos of the artifacts accompany the illustrations and are cataloged according to an individual

artifact number. No color illustrations or depictive drawings of finds of interest are made as all

artifacts must be drawn to the same scale.

1See L. Collett, The  Drawing of Archaeology Pottery, University of Reading Press.

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The excavation of human remains follows a similar methodology to the guidelines

outlined in Human Osteology: A Laboratory and Field Manual (Bass: 1987). Several of the

 burial sarcophagi contained multiple individuals in a secondary, disturbed context. Each layer 

was exposed, photographed and vertically plotted using a fixed site datum and then removed and

identified, exposing subsequent layers below. Due to their disturbed context, each layer of 

remains was boxed accordingly and stored in archival boxes for dry-brush cleaning and analysis.

Any associated burial goods or non-associated artifacts such as stray coins and ceramicfragments were separated by context and boxed separately, again to help to determine the

sequence of events in a particular locale. Soil samples and descriptions were taken for each level.

Mesh-screening was not employed to recover smaller fragments in either the burial matrix or the

general site.

Chersonesos has a rich history of collaboration in the decades following the end of the

Soviet Period. Access was granted to foreigners as early as 1992 at this was followed by an

immediate involvement of joint national projects at the site (Specter: 1997). Major Polish-

Ukrainian excavations were conducted earlier in the decade at the north end of the site 1 which is

visibly celebrated by a collaboration project sign-post. A major project in the northern section of 

the site and adjacent to the field team’s housing barracks is a multi-year project conducted by the Institute of Classical Archaeology (ICA) from the University of Texas at Austin. The 1992 ICA

 project was largely directed by Joseph Carter in conjunction with the Ukrainian based National

Preserve of Tauric Chersonesos which is responsible for excavations at the site and represents

one of the first post-Soviet joint projects on the territory (Carter et al .: 2000: 71).

The resulting publication cited here from the ICA represents one of the few intentional

works devoted, at least in part to according to Carter: “to illustrate the range and scope of the

collaborative efforts as a way of introducing the Chora and this current research to an

international scholarly audience,” (Carter et al .: 2000: 708). Carter explicitly notes the previous

works of past Russian and Ukrainian projects in the project summary as well as the combination

of disciplinary approaches including geographical remote sensing and aerial photography. The

 portion of the site under the joint project was well excavated and preserved without the use

reconstruction additions (see Figure 11). In addition, one of the only known2 Russian-English-

Russian archaeological filed dictionaries was published by Nikita Khrapunov to further facilitate

ongoing collaboration projects (Khrapunov: 2001). It is also worth noting that the joint project

 between the ICA and the National Preserve would have not come into existence if it were not for 

the fact that Chersonesos share a special colonial relationship with the Metaponto (Metapontum)

site in southern Italy, where the ICA had been working since 1974 (Carter et al .: 2000: 708). The

fact than an ancient trade route served as an academic facilitator between modern opposing

national entities is worthy of a study in itself. However, it yet again points out the more common

approaches to future collaborative endeavors (colleague networking) than the more overtoutreaching that is necessary to build permanent exchanges of information.

Projects based on a single contact are in danger of dissolution if the contact itself 

dissolves due to age, research preferences, etc. For a longer term project to sustain itself in the

long term it must function within an inanimate entity such as a foundation or another formal

structure which is led by attainable goals and a permanent decision making body3. Due to the

nature of the collaboration within the project, the work ceased once the main directors sought

1 See www.ukranianmuseum.org for a full description of this excavation.2 The only other know example is the English-Russian and Russian-English Illustrated Historical and 

 Archaeological Dictionary by O.E. Alekseeva and N.F. Savvonidy, St. Petersburg, 1993.3

The Butrint Foundation, British organization that works with Albanians at the site of Butrint near Saranda, Albaniais an excellent example. The foundation functions with a rotating elected body as well as an independent financial

 board which to helps to ensure the longevity of the site and the training of local Albanian archaeologists.

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other academic pursuits. And although many of the senior staff were from a multinational

 background, little (if any) of the fieldworking team were from the region. Virtually all of the

volunteers and students consisted of Americans from the University of Texas at Austin which

due to the academic positions still being held by dormant participants in the senior staff, are

unable to move into a more active position in the region. The void left by a lack of local

subordinates also means that no one is able to continue the necessary artifact processing work 

once the foreign contingents go home as well as the daily maintenance required for the site.

Many of the facilities, including the fieldwork housing barracks and latrines, have fallen

into serious disrepair because of the lack of funding. Cataloged artifacts and field notes have

 been misplaced or rearranged as new personnel not associated with the project move in and use

the laboratories which only undermines the hundreds of hours of work put into the project. In

addition, much of the carefully paved walkways and multi-lingual sign posting has become to

victim of vandalism or poor care. These examples are primarily the result of the independence of 

the project which left no standing resolution with the sites overall administrators for care and the

local authority’s inability or unwillingness to care for structures that they did not oversee. In the

academic realm, in the ten years following this project, little has been reproduced for the local

audience in the form of translated works and many present in the 2010 excavations wereunaware of what was excavated in the ICA locations. Large portions of the GIS imaging

information and datasets remains the property of and in the hands of the ICA which is difficult to

access in Sevastopol or Moscow. While the theft and misuse of acquired data is a common fear 

among archaeologists in general, some channels should exist for the proper exchange of 

information that do not involve the need for personal contacts.

In a strange twist of irony, the Russian archaeological projects in the Colonial Greek 

settlement continued in their own way as a new colonial endeavor. The Russian Academy of 

Sciences no longer dictates the excavations conducted at Chersonesos and, as a result of 

heightening political tensions, has assumed a somewhat subdued role in the activities at the site.

Ukrainian research interests now have first call over who digs and where. Excavation sections of 

limited significance are often reserved for the remaining Russian contingent and there is the

 problem of the complete lack of local funding sources. The longstanding contacts between senior 

colleagues serves as the major chain of substantial contact between Ukrainian and Russian

research groups at the site. The seasonal involvement of Moscow State University, as well as

many local Russians who work at the site, who became involved well before 1991 still continue

an active role at the site despite the change of administration. Not surprisingly, time will

eventually overcome tenure and less involvement from other regional bodies is expected. As of 

today many of the field crew personnel must find their own living quarters in the few empty

spaces at the site dormitory or must camp near by. Many of the supervising staff of university

candidates and doctorate students either have their own local contacts with family members or must stay at local hotels. No paid year-round positions are available for non-Ukrainian nationals

which in turn places a high finical burden on those that choose to work at the site from Russia or 

elsewhere and many of the senior staff have other full time employment outside of their field to

supplement their income.

Thus Russian archaeologists find themselves in a late colonial position in terms of their 

relationship to the site. Similar cases can be found in the role of French archaeological schools in

the Near East, the British and American classical schools in Greece as well as the Ottoman

Empire’s holdings elsewhere. Essentially Chersonesos is seen as a national symbol of Ukraine,

which includes significant legendary locations such as the perceived baptizing location of the

early Rus culture and Vladimir the Great as well as more modern iconic symbols such as theChersonesos fog-bell built in 1778. Like Staraya Ladoga in Russia, Ukraine will thereby view

the discoveries found at the site as a currency of national prestige which should be excavated by

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Ukrainian nationals, any other source would diminish its role as a tool of nationalism. Therefore

this political division of the archaeological site can be seen in conjunction with the greater 

struggle over the Crimean peninsula and recent develops concerning the portage of the Russian

fleet at Sevastopol. It will be interesting to see if the recently renewed ties between the two

nations will have a positive affect on the role of Russian researchers at the site.

The economic use of Chersonesos is heavily dependant upon a positive relationship withits northern neighbor. The Crimean peninsula as a whole, is a traditional vacation destination for 

many citizens of the CIS nation block which, based upon personal observation, is yet to receive a

substantial amount of visitors from outside this region1. The local economy surrounding the site

is still largely underdeveloped in relation to similar archaeological sites of its size such as in

Egypt or at the site of Pompeii. There are only two substantial hotels within walking distance and

two cafes that are less than ten-minutes walk from the main gates. This reduces the economic

viability of the site to a one-day destination centered not on the historical significance of the site,

 but rather its proximity to public beaches. Most archaeological foundations have a certain

aesthetic worth to passers by but according to several local guides, fewer wander into the

museum than to the coast.

However, despite the subordinate role of the site’s history to other attractions, this has not

 become an incentive to reconstruct large portions of the standing ruins with modern construction

materials and methods. Figure 12 depicts a typical portion of the Roman era town at the

southern terminus of the site. Fallen columns have been erected upright with little visible

stabilizing techniques or artificial additions. The remaining walls of the structure have been

capped at their top exposed level which can be deemed necessary due to the amount of direct

human interaction with the ruins. The modern ceramic bricks used to cover the top portion of the

foundations clearly form a visible barrier without camouflaging the true condition of the

remains. The gravel depicted in this figure also impedes erosion in certain high traffic areas.

Other structures such as the amphitheatre have in the past been the victim of large reconstructive

efforts and much of what can be seen is more of an extrapolation than an accurate depiction. Yet

the structures have received no further additions in the recent era, leaving then in at least a partial

unspoiled condition. 

Overall, Chersonesos represents a surprisingly contrary example in methodology when

compared to similar circumstances at Staraya Ladoga, despite its differing position as a colonial

 presence. Both sites represent a source of economic tourism as well as a tool of national

legitimacy. The techniques employed at this site represent a fundamental change in the way that

archaeological data can be utilized due to a more comprehensive collection of artifacts and the

chosen soil-matrix removal methodology. Although the collaboration efforts at Chersonesos lack 

the sustainability required for long term excavations, they are substantially more developed thanthe conditions represented at Staraya Ladoga. Well planned and progressively funded joint-

excavations can provide a more legitimate alternative to fund local endeavors and their staff than

 procedures that involve the artificial reconstruction (and damage) done to some substantial sites

as well as the intentional catered use of artifacts to political actors to gain a financial favor.

1 Support for this comes from a variety of sources including the WE Youth Political Organization’s poll in 2004

claiming; "72% of the Sevastopol citizens support the idea of the independent status of Crimea... and, 95% of therespondents support the constant stationing of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.” The National Census of 2001 as reflects this and includes Russians (71.6%), Ukrainians (22.4%), Belarusians (1.6%), Tatars (0.7%),

Crimean Tatars (0.5%), Armenians (0.3%), Jews (0.3%), Moldovans (0.2%), and Azerbaijanis (0.2%).

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Working without Collaboration: The PaleoIndian/Paleolithic Divide

In the preceding section, examples were given to demonstrate the current condition of 

methodology in Russia as well as a representative example of collaboration in academic journals

and in the field. In addition, the position of Russian archaeological and anthropological

methodology was compared to their counterpart’s theorhetorical approaches in North America

and Europe as well as a discussion describing the entry of Russian researchers and techniquesinto the greater arena of discussion and debate. In the proceeding section, a certain amount of 

detail will be used to discern the other side of the divide in methodology. As it was discussed

above, North American archaeology is remarkably different in some aspects, when compared to

Russian or Western European theory and methodology. As a result, external themes and

information is often disregarded or at least, unintentionally ignored such as the appropriately

named article; Why Don't We Know When the First People Came to North America? published

in American Antiquity in 1989. This article did not contain a single citation from a Russian

author or a source on Russian archaeological data to the point that the article does not include the

word Russia in nearly 20 pages of text on the subject (Meltzer: 1989). This and some of the more

 profound impacts concerning the specific scientific inquiry of the peopling of the New World are

discussed below.

Due simply to the immensity of the geographical region of two major continents and the

mobile nature of the peoples under discussion, it will be of surprise to no one that a variety of 

complex conceptions exist to explain the phenomenon of movement across northern Eurasia and

 North America. However great the size of the region, this example of both time and place can 

serve as a laboratory of collaboration between the discussed parties at hand. From before, the

type of quantitative data analysis, ethnographic reference, periodization and chronology used in

the Paleolithic was thought to be either ‘too germane’ or ‘insufficiently developed to be of use to

Western interests and objectives (Davis: 1983: 404). However as Laughlin writes; “there is no

 place in the world where long-term events have conspired to create a more natural basis for cooperative studies” (Laughlin: 1985: 789).

Compounding this problem is the well known, but little addressed fact, that

archaeologists in the greater English-speaking world did little to acquire the necessary languages

and literature required for fieldwork abroad. Language is still as much as a problem as access

through out the Soviet and post-Soviet Period (Davis: 1983: 404). In the often required text of 

Lewis Binford, Archaeological Perspectives, he cites only 1 French source, compared to 107 in

English. In contrast, a Scandinavian archaeological paper will include; 45% English, 5% French,

15% German, and 35% Scandinavian sour ces (Malmer: 1991: 286).Yet, in other publications

such as The Upper Paleolithic Revolution1 published by the well known Ofer Bar-Yosef in 2002,

35 of 116 sources were cited as being from a non-English source or a collaborative work. Of the35 citations: 13 were French, 4 were Spanish and 6 were Russian, as well as 3 French/English, 6

Russian/English, 2 French/Russian, 1 Swedish/Russian and 1 Japanese/English collaborative

works. Concerning the majority of the Russian texts cited in this report, the average

 bibliographies include 60% Russian and 35-40% English (although many of the texts written in

English will have been written by non-native English-speaking authors). Beyond the obvious

 problem of working with an incomplete data set, being bi-lingually illiterate risks an unintended

duplication of research as well as giving the local reader/researcher in the home-field of study

the sense of looking at an unfinished painting when a text is submitted without the use of prior 

indigenous work. The two Russian journals examined above are readily available on the internet

and can be found without a thoroughgoing knowledge of the Russian language. The prior journal

Soviet Archaeology was cataloged and made available for decades via the Library of Congress in

1See “The Upper Paleolithic Revolution,” Annual Review Anthropology, Vol. 31, 2002.

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 poorly identified Dyuktay culture of the Russian Far East, which has been largely been subdued

due to inconsistencies in the chronology by Russian academic circles over 25 years ago

(Dolitsky: 1985: 368), is still readily used as a viable source culture for native North American

 populations. Attempts to reiterate the fragility of this as a base culture have been made by

Vasil’ev using 423 radiocarbon-dates obtained in Siberia since 1960 and many of which have

 been made available in English print throughout this period (Vasil’ev: 2002: 503). Again, when

work is cited from the other side of Beringia a more complete picture is given and often withvery different results. The Mesa site, a reported Paleoindian site by the U. S. Department of the

Interior and located in eastern Alaska, utilizes work from Ted Goebel and M. Dikova1 on the

Ushki Sites in Kamchatka to suggest a viable source location for this cultural complex based on

current material (Kunz: 2003: 53).

Other less conventional theories such as Bradley and Stanford’s; The North Atlantic Ice-

 Edge Corridor: A Possible Palaeolithic Route to the New World , while stating that; “the

exclusive focus of research on a Beringian entry point has not been productive,” are at the same

time using only the Goebel and Kunz citations listed above as the sole source on Eurasian

archaeological materials. These sources, taken alone, are set up against multiple French and

German sources and the detailed analysis of sites in the central United States such as he Johnsonsite (State reference number: 40Dv400) in Tennessee's Central Basin, giving an unbalanced

 picture of possible migration routes which is based largely upon the similarities and

dissimilarities of a single archaeological component, the stone projectile-points found at each

location (Bradley and Stanford: 2004). The conservative habit of using Western European

sources (of which many were already translated into English by the author) demonstrates the

fragility that many theories concerning early human migrations will be in once better access to

all available information is considered. As a result, the counter argument as developed by Straus,

Goebel as well as Meltzer (see above) in 2005 easily refuted the argument by citing additional

archaeological data from East Asia and reminding the author of the archaeological concept of 

technological convergence, or parallelism in technological development under similar living

conditions (Straus et al .: 2005).

The last example provided above is in the minority relative to the exclusion of Russian

archaeological material as it was addressed by those concerned in the field. Several other 

examples themed under the settlement of the Americas such as Alan G. Fix who makes a leap by

actually stating that; “there is agreement that Asia was the source population” (Fix: 2003: 1), yet

does so without citing one single foreign source. Other leading papers over the last thirty and a

half years (Anderson and Gillam: 2000, Whitley and Dorn: 1993, Lynch: 1990, Kelly and Todd:

1988, Fladmark: 1979 and several others cited above) use a variety of North American sites and

models, while others (Fahnestock: 1989) refer to the controversy of the lack of data as an

enigma, but to still refer to Russia as a source in name only. Both groups lack the completenessof a full argument by limiting the data to one hemisphere when the actual dilemma involves two.

This section has, in brief, attempted to show the severity of the error when an incomplete

 picture is drawn by excluding a large segment of information. It has become evident that many

of the works used here, while not exhaustive, illustrate that a false barrier of information still

exists between the two nations surveyed in this work and are mostly held in place by a one-side

argument. Current researchers are in a sense still unwilling to look for foreign sources to give an

accurate account of the geographical region that is largely believed to be responsible for the

entire population of the Western Hemisphere are forced to re-cannibalize older material. Several

in this category often cite each other in a vicious cycle of negligence toward new material. This

1 See Goebel, T., M. Waters, M. Dikova, “The Ushki Sites, Kamchatka and Pleistocene Peopling of the Americas.”

Paper presented at the 67th Annual Meeting of The Society for American Archaeology, Denver, Colorado, 2002.

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in turn, has built an inverted pyramid of theory with only the smallest cornerstone of Eurasian

evidence to support one of the greatest migrations in human history.

Conclusion 

This text has endeavored to show from a variety of angles two major, but interrelated points. The first argument has sought to clarify lingering misconceptions of the degree of work 

carried out in the Soviet Period of Russia and its related ability to communicate and collaborate

with its western counter part in the US. Many within the archaeological community, in

conjunction with greater beliefs about the Soviet world, believed that the possibility of the

exchange of actual data as well as direct access via collaboration was universally limited to US

and other Western scholars. While it is true that work was regulated and restricted to a point,

especially in the early phases of Soviet control, it is also true that there was not a uniform

restriction against non-Soviet personnel and an interest in their methodology. The first segment

of this work has shown that in-fact a high degree of work was underway within the USSR and

that in many ways it preceded similar efforts and theories in the West. This included such

 programs as large governmental project-related excavations as well as some similar connections

that were to be made by the New Archaeology between anthropology and pre-historic cultures.

The true volume of work conducted under the Soviet regime is followed by a similar look 

at several noteworthy examples of collaboration throughout the Soviet Period. Multi-national

excavations and fieldwork studies continued from the late Tsarist Period through to Perestroika

and across greater Eurasia were able to publish during this time and in both fields of research.

Therefore it is believed that the false construction of the ability to conduct fieldwork during the

Soviet Period owes more credit to the limited nature of the dissemination of this knowledge by

the individual or party of individuals, rather than solely a product of larger political restriction.

The habit of disseminating work after its completion has not developed to such a state, either then or now, which in turn creates a false bottom to the amount of work that has actually been

 produced.

Stemming from this misconstructed past, is the present state of exchange between these

two nations. Firstly, what directly followed the Soviet Period, and in large part due to the level of 

this unawareness, was the unnecessarily sudden appearance of Russian methodology into the

current theological debate at the time of the political transition. Like in many areas of study and

society, Russian archaeological methodology found itself fully exposed and somewhat

unprepared for the theories of the field from the West that were themselves deep in the process

of reevaluation. Russian scholars traditionally sought a conclusive agreement before moving

forward with a theorhetorical concept and thus the existing cross-fire between differing Westernmethodologies left the Russian school of thought in a sidelined, yet strategic position. During the

same time that Russian academics were able to more openly criticize and evaluate Western

methodology in relation to their own, US scholars briefly exposed themselves to the concepts

and data that were now more clearly seen as existing.

What was desired by many US scholars was the adoption of their methodology by their 

Russian counterparts over what they had used previously. Similar to the assistance provided in

the political sphere that sought to change the Russian form of government into something similar 

from the West, American archaeologists began to push the current trends in theory and

methodology. However, Russian theory shared concepts with both the US and western European

schools of thought and taking one at the expense of the other was not an option. In one such brief example this timeline is briefly discussed in relation to the study of the prehistoric migration to

the New World. As an interest to both as well as involving both geographical areas, this example

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 proved to be a true case-in-point in regard to the relationship between these two nations. As it

has been shown in both the style of government and in archaeological theory, Russia had to

quietly develop its own form of methodology suitable to its own analysis of contemporary

society and in the way in which it evaluated the cultures of the past.

What was as equally quiet was the slow return to excluding Russian data from its sources.

Therefore the third section of this analysis looks at the current state of collaboration in text, voiceand practice. The four journals listed above each represent a different approach to inclusion. The

two American choices, American Antiquity and Current Anthropology were chosen based on

their position and status in American archaeology. The former is the major product of a large

organization (the Society for American Archaeologists), which is highly regarded in all fields of 

academic and professional archaeology. This journal also devotes a considerable amount of 

space to the chosen example of the New World migration and therefore it is deemed as a possible

location for collaborative work. The latter journal includes all subdisciplines of anthropology,

including work on prehistoric archaeology, and has actively sought the inclusion of many foreign

authors from the region in which they study. The two Russian journals, Russian Archaeology and

Sibirica are respectively reflective of the criteria for the American journals listed, but under one

main difference of criteria. As the Russian Far East is the sending region for migration to the New World is must be seen as an independent variable in its relation to the West as prehistoric

 people were not reliant of technology or people from the New World region to exist. In sum, it is

surmised that American journals are dependant upon data from the Old World to present a valid

argument concerning the peopling of the New World and Russian publications are not, given that

they are to sending element. Yet, what has become evident is the fact that American journals

have very little data from the Old World, although it is believed to be a necessary factor. And

likewise, Russian sources carry more US authors and data on the topic of the Paleolithic Period

even though in many regions it cannot be related in both a temporal and geographical context.

A few leading experts on the subject of the use of Russian data and collaboration have

confirmed this assessment in the interviews that followed. Dr. Vasil’ev has expressed the notion

that tradition as well as language has kept the use of Russian sources at bay and Dr. Uschakow

has commented on the fact that collaboration does not plant deep enough roots to allow fro a

long term growth in collaboration. And Dr. Prasciunas’ expert critique on the subject of Russian

data in published works has confirmed the belief in that habit is as strong as a factor in the

exclusion of foreign sources as is politics.

Furthermore, a direct evaluation of collaboration and the use of archaeology in actual

fieldwork further complicates the topic. The ancient site of Staraya Ladoga, while open to

limited forms of collaboration, has been turned into a tool of nationalistic revival that in turn,

repels international recognition and study. Chersonesos, on the other hand, began its recent era of work as a model of collaboration, but it soon faded due to the factors that its collaboration was

 based on a Russian-US connection that excluded its new nation status and the type of 

collaboration was largely based upon a few personal connections.

While Chersonesos represents only one excavation, the premise that collaboration can not

survive only on the bread of personal contact is visible as well in the state of international

conferences. Workshops and multinational seminars with the intent of exchange have largely

done so only at a very superficial level. Information is exchanged from one hand to another in

the very best of situations and in other examples, such as the study of the Arctic region as a

whole, international work is absent almost entirely. The only noted example to this situation

concerns the Russian American Conference in Alaska. The openness of this event has much toattribute to the growing interest in personal genealogy in the region that it studies and as a result

its product of knowledge is more widely shared. Other seminars and workshops, due to the level

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of professional exchange, do not have the luxury of a greater ethnic interest and must therefore

make a more overt and directed attempt to distribute.

To some the nature of this argument may seem trivial and lack effect, until its

manifestation is revealed through its very absence. The final section this work again uses the

common-interest example of the New World migration to survey the result. Many who study this

field in the US use very little data from east of Beringia. Many others that seek the use of Russian data use outdated sets of information or cite from one or two well known sources, such

as the book  Kostenki to Clovis, to sufficiently cover the half of the continental migration in

which they discuss. It has become accepted habit to allow this blank page of data to still receive

the printing press. Absence of evidence has become again, proof of absence. It is therefore

 become increasingly difficult for future and current researchers to cite past examples of this

movement of people from their own native language sources and as a result an inverted pyramid

has been built, not on a theory that has been proven wrong, but upon theories that lack key

components of data. It must therefore be finally stated that this work does not claim to be

exhaustive on any front, and there are many more examples that can be included for or against

this conclusion, however, as it has attempted to explain, it is the result of what has been made

openly available.

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Figures

Figure 1. 1938 Smithsonian field party near Commander Bay, Bering Island. Left to right: Laughlin, Hrdlicka, five Aleuts,

Trebes. Laughlin holding Japanese glass fishing net floats.Source: Laughlin: 1985.

Figure 2. Ruth Laughlin and A. P. Okladnikov, Anangula Island, 1974. Source: Laughlin: 1985. 

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 Figure 3. Reconstruction of the fortress walls at Staraya Ladoga, Russia, May 2010.Photograph taken by the author.

Figure 4. External view of the reconstruction efforts at Staraya Ladoga, May 2010.Photograph taken by the author.

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 Figure 5. Dr. Anatoli Kirpichnikov (left), director of the excavations at Staraya Ladoga with SergeiMironov (center), party chair of  Justice Russia in the Duma of the Russian Federation, 10 August 2006.

Photograph taken by the author.

Figure 6. Excavations at Staraya Ladoga showing the traditional methodology of a horizontal excavation, or exposing multiple features at once in the same level, August 2006.

Photograph taken by the author.

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 Figure 7. Excavations of late Bronze Age storage pits in South Cadbury, Somerset, United KingdomShowing the European methodology of excavating by individual feature, June 2003.

Photograph taken by the author.

Figure 8. Capped and stabilized structural foundations near the kremlin at Pskov, Russia,

3 November 2010.Photograph taken by the author.

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 Figure 9. Excavated burial chamber 16-A and exposed Greek Period road in profile. Facing Northwest,4 August 2010.

Photograph taken by the author.

Figure 10. Artifact Illustrator, Olga Blinova, detaining ceramic fragments at Chersonesos, August 2010.

Photograph taken by Katya Lesnaya.

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 Figure 13. Residents from Sitka, Alaska in stylized traditional Russian dress participating in the 2010 International

Conference on Russian America. 20 August 2010. Photo taken by Alexander Dolitsky and courtesy of the NationalPark Service, Department of the Interior.

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Acknowledgements

The work of this essay could not have been made complete with out the efforts of my

thesis advisor Dr. Marina Mogilner and my reviewer, Dr. Sergey Erofeev. I would also like to

thank my wife Olga for her comments on my translation work as well as her assistance in photo

editing. I remain, as expected, fully liable for this final version and for any problematic facts or 

interpretations it contains. Partial financial assistance was provided by the European University’sAlumni Travel Grant for academic research. Their assistance made the evaluation of 

methodology in Crimea possible.

 No individual authors were contacted with regard to collaboration in their published

works except Dr. Vasil’ev. A complete index of all journal publications cited in the article

survey above is available upon request from the author.

The cover photo is a published copyright file of the author.

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