History of the archaeological collection

The structure of the Museum of Sloboda Ukraine, created in Kharkiv in January 1920, had no archaeological department and therefore no archaeological collections. Only when the institution was renamed the Ukrainian State Historical Museum in 1930 and the range of its work expanded did a corresponding department appear and archaeological holdings begin to form. From then on the museum’s staff took an active part in the first domestic construction-site expedition to study archaeological monuments in the area of the Dniprohes construction and the flood zone in the Dnipro Rapids region (Nadporizhzhia). In 1931 T. T. Teslia, the discoverer of the Nadporizhzhia Palaeolithic, was seconded from the historical museum to the Dniprobud expedition; in the same year he managed to investigate sites near the village of Petro-Svystunovo, in the Kysla, Rosokhuvata and Holaia gullies. That same year T. T. Teslia, together with I. F. Levytskyi (appointed in March 1932 head of the museum’s department of pre-class society), discovered and partly investigated sites in the Dubova and Osokorova gullies, where excavations continued over the following two years.

I. F. Levytskyi’s scholarly interests were turned to Stone Age monuments, which determined the main priority of his work as head of the department of pre-class society after the Dniprobud work was completed. Among the other best-known pre-war investigations were the excavations of the Hontsi Palaeolithic site in 1935 by a joint archaeological expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and the State Historical Museum, led by I. F. Levytskyi; field surveys in Bohodukhiv, Amvrosiivka and Mala Vovcha; and the excavation of a multi-layered settlement near Nova Pokrovka, where the remains of an iron-smelting furnace were studied (1935–1936), as well as a Bronze Age and Scythian-period settlement near Bezliudivka (1939) (Collection — Arch. 6).

V. A. Hrinchenko, head of the department of slave-owning society of the Ukrainian State Historical Museum, took an active part in the Dniprobud expedition. Under his supervision, 33 sites were investigated in the construction area over several years; the best known was the remains of a burial and commemorative complex of nomads of the first half of the 8th century — the so-called “Voznesenka hoard”. The brightest finds of this complex were handed over for safekeeping precisely to Kharkiv, to the historical museum.

The museum’s archaeological holdings grew in various ways before the war, and especially successfully until 1934. Thus, using the privileges of a capital city, the Ukrainian State Historical Museum became the owner of a representative collection of Scythian antiquities from the State Hermitage (materials from 6 Scythian kurgans — Melhunivskyi, Oleksandropil, Shulhivka, Illintsi, the First Mordvynivskyi and Chmyreva Mohyla), transferred to Ukraine in 1932 by decision of the Parity Commission.

Great trials fell on the museum and its collections with the start of the Second World War. It was not possible to evacuate all the museum’s collections in time. Only two railway cars were provided for the collections of three museums — the Hryhorii Skovoroda Historical Museum, the Central Museum of the Revolution of the Ukrainian SSR and the local history museum — and they held only 22 crates. On 10 October, at Oleksiivka station in Belgorod region, the train came under German air attack, and a direct hit by an aerial bomb completely destroyed one of the cars. The directors of two museums, I. Yabluchnyk and S. Kompaniiets, were also killed. By order of the station commandant the museum items were gathered by soldiers of a fighter battalion, packed into 8 crates and sent to Ufa, where they stayed until 1944.

The fate of the collections left in Kharkiv was no less dramatic. From the very beginning of the occupation the collections that had not been evacuated suffered looting — both spontaneous and organised by the working group of the Rosenberg Operational Staff. In November 1941 the Kharkiv city administration merged four museums (historical, local history, anti-religious and the Museum of the Revolution) into the Museum of Slobozhanshchyna, with O. M. Rudynskyi as its director. The structure of the museum had a place for an archaeological department, headed by I. F. Levytskyi.

In spring 1942 the museum came under the authority of Department VII of the permanent German commandant’s office, on whose initiative the creation of an “Archaeological Exhibition” began in July 1942. Within a week the archaeological and ethnographic collections of the Museum of Slobozhanshchyna, the university’s archaeological and ethnographic museums, and some geological and palaeontological collections of the geological and biological museums were brought to the premises of the former pedagogical institute at 33 Sumska Street.

The exhibition was ceremonially opened on 1 November 1942. It consisted of 9 sections and was devoted almost entirely to the ancient history of Ukraine. The first two sections covered the Stone Age of Ukraine, the third the Bronze Age, the fourth the problems of Greek colonisation of the northern Black Sea region and the Scythian-Sarmatian period, the fifth the history of the Gothic tribes of the first half of the 1st millennium AD, the next three the history of early Slavic cultures and the Vikings of the 6th–10th centuries AD, the material culture of Kyivan Rus of the 11th–12th centuries AD, and the raids of Asian tribes on the territory of Europe.

On 14 February 1943, before leaving the city, the building housing the archaeological exhibition was set on fire, which destroyed and partly damaged a large number of exhibits.

On 23 August 1943 Kharkiv was finally liberated from the German-Fascist invaders, and as early as 28 September the decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR “On resuming the work of the historical museum in Kharkiv” started the restoration of the institution. On 6 October 1943 I. F. Levytskyi was reinstated as head of the department of primitive communal society.

Intensive work began immediately to rescue the collections on the site of the burned archaeological exhibition (33 Sumska Street) and in the building of the Historical Museum (2 Proletarska Square). The work lasted for three “seasons”. From 1943 to 1945 a register of the surviving museum items was compiled, and they were systematised, described and partly attributed. The exhibits recovered from the ashes laid the foundation for the museum’s new archaeological collection (Arch. 1–4, 6, 25, 30, 88, 95, 96, 98, 99), and the museum became the heir to the remains of the pre-war collections of the Archaeological Museum of Kharkiv University.

Other collections gradually returned to the museum. In autumn 1944 the surviving remains of the collection of precious-metal items, including many archaeological objects, were delivered from Ufa to Kharkiv (via Kyiv). In 1945 several museum items taken away by the occupiers, which Red Army soldiers had found in the town of Tsedinin (Brandenburg province), were returned to the museum.

In the first post-war year I. F. Levytskyi finally had the opportunity to carry out field surveys. The main research area was limited to Kharkiv and its surroundings, where new settlements of various periods were found near the Donetske hillfort, Osnova station and the village of Druha Dudkivka, and the remains of cremation burial grounds were recorded in the village of Zhykhor and near Osnova station, among others (Arch. 10).

In 1948, under the leadership of I. F. Levytskyi, research began on the multi-layered Merefa settlement, which had been damaged during the construction of the Moscow–Simferopol highway (Arch. 9). That same year a Scythian-period settlement was excavated in Sarzhyn Yar (Arch. 15). In Zhytomyr region the study of a Neolithic site on the Mostva peat bog continued.

The following season I. F. Levytskyi and L. P. Lande carried out joint research on several sites — in particular, excavations of a settlement near the village of Bezliudivka and surveys of a Scythian-period settlement near Ostroverkhivka (Arch. 8, 16, 17). In 1951 the Podvirky settlement in Derhachi district was surveyed (Arch. 19).

But in May 1951, because of poor health, I. F. Levytskyi had to leave the museum, and the following year Ivan Fedorovych died. On 25 October 1952 Order No. 148 was issued, under which, “in order to improve organisational, methodological and cultural-educational work”, it was envisaged that the “department of the primitive communal system be kept in the exhibition structure at the same scale as it is, while the staff post of head of department be freed and transferred to the newly created department of Soviet history”. Thus for many years the museum lost its significance as one of the leading centres of archaeological research in Kharkiv region, although archaeological activity did not stop even in the years of enforced oblivion. As early as September 1955 Ye. V. Puzakov was hired and assigned to the department of feudalism. Ye. V. Puzakov left his mark on archaeological science as the author of numerous surveys that discovered many new sites, as well as of investigations of the multi-layered settlements of Serdiukove II, Velyka Topoliakha I and Svitlychne I (best known for materials of the Eneolithic — Sredni Stih and Repino antiquities), the excavation of a Bronze Age kurgan near Rizdviani village in Lozova district, and more. The materials of these investigations make up about forty collections of the archaeological holdings (Arch. 23, 31, 35, 36, 49–72, 74–84).

The archaeological holdings were also replenished in the 1950s in other ways. Given the significant losses during the Great Patriotic War, by order of the Ministry of Culture materials from a number of other museums of Ukraine were handed over to Kharkiv. Thus in 1950 Trypillian and Scythian antiquities, as well as materials from the excavations of Olbia, came from the State Historical Museum in Kyiv, and antiquities of the Bronze Age, the Scythian period and the Middle Ages from the Dnipropetrovsk Historical Museum. That same year some collections from the holdings of the Izium local historian M. V. Sibilov were transferred from the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Arch. 18, 21), and in 1953 an ancient Greek amphora from the Scythian kurgan Solokha arrived from the Kherson Museum (Arch. 103).

In 1959 the so-called “Kharkiv hoard” came to the museum — a collection of artefacts of various periods, from the Neolithic to Cossack times, discovered by builders during earthworks on Shota Rustaveli Street (Arch. 32). Most likely, the “hoard” consisted of objects gathered by an unknown enthusiast at the burnt site of the “Archaeological Exhibition”.

Sometimes archaeologists from other institutions shared their finds. Thus the museum received materials from the surveys of the Kharkiv detachment of the Scythian expedition led by P. D. Liberov in 1953–1954 (Arch. 108), from the surveys and excavations of the Siverskyi Donets detachment of the Donetsk expedition of the Institute of the History of Material Culture led by S. O. Pletnova (Arch. 104–106), and from the expedition of Kharkiv State University led by B. A. Shramko (Donetske hillfort, the villages of Shmarivka and Mokhnach) (Arch. 33, 85). However, these additions were sporadic. Almost two decades were quite enough to understand the mistake of abolishing the specialised department in the museum’s structure, and by Order No. 76 of 12 November 1968, signed by the director of the Kharkiv Historical Museum M. A. Voievodin, “in order to strengthen and more broadly develop archaeological work”, a department of archaeology was created. Emiliia Mykhailivna Kadieieva was appointed head of the department, and Ye. V. Puzakov became its researcher. The following year the remains of a destroyed Sarmatian burial near Velyki Prokhody, investigated by E. M. Kadieieva, came to the museum (Arch. 37), but in March 1970 Emiliia Mykhailivna left the museum and the post of head of department was vacant again.

In July 1970 V. H. Borodulin, who had just graduated from Kharkiv State University, was appointed to this post. The formation of the archaeological collection over the next two decades can conventionally be divided into three periods. The first, which lasted six field seasons, was devoted mainly to V. H. Borodulin’s study of kurgans of the Eneolithic–Bronze Age in the new-construction areas in the south of Kharkiv region and adjacent districts of Dnipropetrovsk region — at first as a trainee archaeologist in the “Dnipro–Donbas” expedition led by D. Ya. Telehin, and later in independent excavations, in particular of kurgans near the villages of Minivka, Verkhnia Samara, Kniazeve and Hrushevakha, and in intensive surveys that made it possible to discover many new sites and to enrich the museum’s holdings with a significant number of exhibits (Arch. 109–115).

Excavations of Bronze Age kurgans continued in the second half of the 1970s (the villages of Khotimlia and Novo-Petrivka), but the priority of the department’s work at that time became the study of burial monuments of the Scythian period. This began in 1976 with the excavation of the Protopopivka kurgan burial ground [10]. The following year two kurgans on the north-eastern outskirts of Kharkiv were investigated, and then, over three seasons (1978–1980), 35 kurgans of the Pisochyn burial ground were excavated. The second stage ended in 1982, when an interesting kurgan of the 5th century BC with a horse burial was investigated near Korotych (Arch. 118, 121–129, 133).

That same year the third stage began — the longest and most productive, which can conventionally be called the “Saltiv” stage. It was started by the excavation, over two seasons, of a new catacomb burial ground of the Saltiv culture near the village of Stary Saltiv, discovered at the construction site of a motor-repair workshop (Arch. 132, 134, 135).

And from 1984 the museum’s archaeological expedition resumed work at the well-known eponymous site of the Saltiv culture — the Verkhnii Saltiv catacomb burial ground. The longest and largest-scale excavations were carried out on the first (main) area of the burial ground (71 catacombs, several pit and horse burials); in 1988–1992 burials of the third area of the burial ground (25 catacombs) were investigated; and in 1989 a new, fourth area was discovered, where 17 catacombs were excavated over two seasons (Arch. 135–140, 142–147). In addition, in 1987 another new Saltiv burial ground was discovered near the village of Rubizhne, where 13 catacombs were investigated (Arch. 141).

From 1988 the museum’s interest in monuments of the Late Palaeolithic was renewed. A new direction in the museum’s archaeological research was begun by the museum staff member I. A. Snizhko. Over several years the excavation of the Late Palaeolithic workshop near the village of Synychyne was completed (1991, 1995, 1997, 2002), and in 2004 a new site was discovered — a campsite-workshop near the village of Kamianka in Izium district, which the archaeological expedition led by I. A. Snizhko has been excavating for 7 field seasons already (2005–2011) (Arch. 151, 152, 154, 164, 169, 173, 177, 179, 180, 183, 186).

At the beginning of 1993 V. S. Aksonov took up the post of head of the department of archaeology; his first independent excavations were devoted to kurgans of the Eneolithic–Bronze Age — near the village of Spodobivka in Shevchenkove district in 1993 and the village of Chervone in Pervomaiskyi district in 1994 (Arch. 148). From 1993 the study of Saltiv antiquities was also continued by excavations at the Netailivka burial ground. The main field work was concentrated on the sites of the Verkhnii Saltiv archaeological complex, namely the Rubizhne catacomb burial ground (1995) (Arch. 150), the Verkhnii Saltiv catacomb burial ground, area No. 4 (1997–2011 — Arch. 157–159, 161–163, 166, 168, 171, 174, 181, 185), and the Netailivka ground burial ground (1993, 2006–2010 — Arch. 172, 175, 178, 182, 184).

Among the other most interesting acquisitions one should mention the discovery in 1996 of a unique inhumation burial of the Penkivka culture near the village of Mokhnach in Zmiiv district (Arch. 153), a burial in a catacomb of the Scythian period near Korotych (Arch. 176), the burial of a Scythian horseman-warrior from Peresichne (Arch. 167), and others.

The museum’s holdings were also replenished through donations from fellow archaeologists. Thus S. I. Bieriestnov handed over materials from several burial complexes of the Kupiievakha kurgan burial ground of the Scythian period (Arch. 167), A. V. Kryhanov the materials of excavations of the Netailivka ground burial ground (Arch. 165, 170), and staff of the Sloboda Archaeological Service a number of finds made of precious metals. Thanks to V. V. Didyk, a researcher at the Kharkiv Scientific and Methodological Centre for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, interesting artefacts of the Migration Period came to the museum. Among the artefacts received from private individuals, a collection of weapons donated by the People’s Deputy of Ukraine O. B. Feldman should be noted.

In recent years a regular source of new acquisitions for the museum’s archaeological holdings has been the staff of the Kharkiv customs office, who periodically hand over items seized during attempts to cross the state border. In this way the museum collection has been enriched with a collection of late Roman clay vessels from the necropolises of the Crimean peninsula and with weapons and horse equipment of the Scythian period.

The composition of the collection shows that the main source of archaeological antiquities for the museum’s holdings remains the excavation of ancient sites in the territory of Kharkiv region. The most attractive items — those with not only scholarly but also high exhibition value — came into the holdings as a result of the study of burial monuments.