Burial Ground of the Bilozerka Culture near the Village of Shyroke (Monograph)
Evelina Antonivna Kravchenko. Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher of the Department of Early Iron Age Archaeology of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Evelina Antonivna Kravchenko. Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher of the Department of Early Iron Age Archaeology of the Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
In 1963, when one of the repressed researchers of the archaeological heritage of the Kherson region and Crimea, O.K. Takhtai, died in Donetsk, the study of the Bilozerka culture burial ground on the outskirts of the village of Shyroke near Skadovsk was completed. These studies were carried out in connection with the laying of irrigation canals — Dnipro water was to give life to the arid lands of the Kherson region and to Crimea, which had been returned to Ukraine and was deserted and devastated after World War II. These studies were conducted by a young and then unknown archaeologist — Oleksandr Mykhailovych Leskov.
For long 56 years, the material of this burial ground near the village of Shyroke, one of the largest burial grounds of the Bilozerka culture, awaited publication. The complex and dramatic fate of its researcher — Oleksandr Mykhailovych Leskov left an imprint on the fate of his expeditions' materials as well — they remained unprocessed for a very long time, as if having an author but no actual processing. O.M. Leskov was born on May 19, 1933, in Kharkiv. In 1955, he graduated with honors from the Faculty of History of Kharkiv University and entered postgraduate studies at the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.
After completing his postgraduate studies, he was hired by the Department of Scythian-Sarmatian Archaeology of the Institute. In 1961, he defended his candidate's dissertation "Mountainous Crimea in the 1st Millennium BC" and immediately published it as a separate monograph (Leskov, 1965). The subject of Oleksandr Mykhailovych's early scientific career covered Crimean antiquities of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages.
Actually, his first expeditions were also Crimean — as part of the expeditions of his scientific supervisor S.M. Bibikov, he worked as a separate squad on the excavations and surveys of the Kyzil-Koba burial grounds (1950s, Urkusta, Dzhepallakh, Chuyncha, Kapak-Tash, Karly-Kaya, etc.). As part of the Crimean expeditions, he began conducting surveys in the Kherson region already beyond the Perekop – the North Crimean Archaeological Expedition. The Shyroke burial ground, discovered by the head of the expedition N.P. Shults, was explored by its Krasnoznamensk squad.
Since the late 1950s, O.M. Leskov began working on the Kerch Peninsula, and later led several large new-construction expeditions – the Kerch and South Ukrainian ones. In 1967, Oleksandr Mykhailovych formed and began to coordinate a new full-fledged direction of the institute's activity – new-construction archaeology. In the following year, 1968, he headed the largest one – the Kakhovka Expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1971, this expedition changed its name to Kherson and became permanently active with the rights of a department. However, such a rapid rise of the scientist did not please some of his respected colleagues.
Coinciding with the ousting of Shelest from office, a denunciation was written against O.M. Leskov, he was "framed with politics" and fired from his job on charges of "Zionism in the expedition." Oleksandr Mykhailovych's legacy – the expedition, materials, and most importantly – funding – went to the institution. O.M. Leskov was also banned from the profession – he was transferred to work at the Institute of Cybernetics. It was impossible to work in the field of archaeology in areas controlled by the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, and there was no question of returning to Crimea or the Kherson region.
O.M. Leskov left Kyiv and Ukrainian archaeology in 1974 and moved to Leningrad. The following year, on his second attempt, he defended his doctoral dissertation "The Final Stage of the Bronze Age in the South of Ukraine" in Moscow at the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (the first work was entitled "Pre-Scythian Period in the South of Ukraine" and failed the defense in Moscow) while being an employee of the Museum of Atheism and Religion in Leningrad, and in 1981 he moved to Moscow and began working as the head of the archaeology department at the State Museum of Oriental Art.
The creation of this department aimed to organize new-construction and salvage research in the North Caucasus – Leskov's extraordinary organizational talent and experience were finally remembered and engaged in this colossally important field of archaeological research eight years later. Today, the gold of Adygea is known worldwide, but back then, no one paid any attention to the kurgans near the village of Ulyap. Oleksandr Mykhailovych organized exhibitions of finds from these excavations all over the world from the North Caucasus to Latin America.
In 1985, due to the huge volume of work, the subject of the department headed by O.M. Leskov was expanded – the State Committee for Science and Technology of the USSR allocated additional funds for the creation of the Central Asian and Chukotka archaeological expeditions with the subsequent creation of sectors of Central Asia and Chukotka, and Siberia. This department still works fruitfully on this subject in the Russian Federation, which cannot be said about the fate of new-construction departments at the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, where all of them were eventually liquidated, and Ukrainian museums were eventually completely banned from conducting new-construction research.
Without going into details of this deplorable situation in Ukraine now, it is still worth noting that the reasons for it lie not in state policy or poor funding. In 1997, Oleksandr Mykhailovych moved to the United States of America following his family's departure, where he later began working at the universities of California (Berkeley), Texas (Austin), and Pennsylvania (Philadelphia). In the 2000s, he came to Ukraine several times and lectured at the Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Taurida universities.
In 2018, in his 86th year of life, Oleksandr Mykhailovych passed away, leaving us a huge amount of unpublished archaeological material, a number of successfully functioning institutions for Russian science, and more than a hundred scientific works for the whole world, including 20 monographs, catalogs, and albums. I must mention that my successful work also began on the advice of Oleksandr Mykhailovych, who mentioned in a conversation with the project director under whom I worked, Professor Joseph Carter, director of the Institute of Classical Archaeology at the University of Texas, that O.M. Leskov, as a postgraduate student, had once seen very interesting material excavated by S.F. Strzheletskyi, which is stored in the holdings of the Chersonesos Reserve.
Based on this mention, J. Carter wrote a short note: "Show Evelina everything that Leskov wrote about" and left it with the head of the Chersonesos holdings. This is how I saw Uch-Bash, which became the basis of my candidate's dissertation, the subject of my research for the last 16 years, and the object of nine years of archaeological excavations in Inkerman. A little less than 60 years have passed since the excavations of Shyroke – one of the first expeditions of Oleksandr Mykhailovych Leskov. During this time, the Institute of Archaeology changed its premises twice, and the Scientific Holdings of the Institute even more.
When back in 2009 I proposed to process his collection and publish the material, the material was not separated into a separate collection, it was part of a large collection from several years of excavations of the North Crimean and South Ukrainian expeditions of O.M. Leskov. Over the years of moves and inappropriate storage conditions, the once reconstructed ceramic vessels had fallen apart and lay in boxes as solid ceramic piles mixed with plaster inserts.
The tags with inventory numbers were mixed up, and everything had to be checked against the report and diaries to recreate a genuine collection inventory with digital photos of the items.
Initially, a group of scientists began working on the materials. In addition to me, Tetiana Hoshko (work with bronze items) and Roman Lysenko (technical work and photography) joined. But it was not possible to proceed to mass processing immediately. Roman Lysenko, on whom the main laboratory work rested, was dismissed from the institute under unclear circumstances, and at that time I was processing giant volumes of material from the excavations of Uch-Bash, which left no time for anything else.
Despite this, today the material of the burial ground has been processed and digitized in accordance with global requirements for the creation of archival documentation, collection No. 1545 has been created and transferred to the holdings with the corresponding act (No. 845). The material has been brought to exhibition quality. The excavation report has also been digitized. The general plan of the burial ground and the plans of the graves with inventory have been verified. The monograph "Burial Ground of the Bilozerka Culture near the Village of Shyroke" / Leskov, O. M., Kravchenko, E. A., Hoshko, T. Yu. Lviv; Vynnyky: Historical and Local Lore Museum; Maidan, 2019. — 206 p., ISBN 978-966-372-712-7 finally saw the light of day in Ukraine.
The materials of the excavation report are presented in the first chapter of the work – "Description of the Shyroke Burial Ground, Catalog of Burials and Inventory" authored by O.M. Leskov, as the head of the expedition and author of the excavation report, and E.A. Kravchenko, as the compiler of the material and author of the illustrations. The preface, introduction, chapter 2, conclusions, afterword, summary, and appendix were written by E.A. Kravchenko, chapter 3 was written by T.Yu. Hoshko, the list of references and abbreviations was compiled by E.A. Kravchenko, and the translation of the summary into English was done by E. Kravchenko.
The conclusions obtained during the analysis of the material of the Shyroke burial ground confirmed the correctness of the research direction of the Lower Dnipro and Crimea as a unified region during the crisis of the bronze industry and the beginning of obtaining iron from ore, as stated by O.K. Takhtai back in the middle of the 20th century. At the turn of historical epochs, Crimea turned into a kind of bridge between the North Pontic region, the lands of mainland Ukraine, and the latest technologies of the Caucasus, which was closely connected with the civilizations of the Near East and the Mediterranean.