Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T08:21:04.680Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Theory and practice in Russian and Soviet archaeology: retrospect and prospect

Review products

StephenLeach. A Russian perspective on theoretical archaeology: the life and work of Leo S. Klejn. 2015. 220 pages, 11 b&w illustrations. Walnut Creek (CA): Left Coast; 978-1-629-58-138-5 hardback $79.
L.S.Klejn. Istoriya rossiiskoi arkheologii: ucheniya, shkoly i lichnosti [The history of Russian archaeology: doctrines, schools and personalities]. 2014. Volume 1: general overview and pre-revolutionary times. 704 pages, 139 b&w illustrations. Volume 2: archaeologists of the Soviet epoch. 640 pages, 150 b&w illustrations. St Petersburg: Eurasia; 978-5-91852-075-8 hardback (in Russian).

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 December 2017

Yaroslav V. Kuzmin
Yaroslav V. Kuzmin*
Affiliation:
Sobolev Institute of Geology & Mineralogy, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk 630090, Russia; and Tomsk State University, Tomsk 634050, Russia (Email: [email protected]; [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Despite the fact that several books and a plethora of articles have been published in recent decades on the archaeology of the USSR and Russia, Soviet-Russian archaeology is still largely ignored in the West (e.g. Fagan 2003, but see Trigger 2006: 230–32, 326–44). For non-Russian scholars, the first acquaintance with it can be nightmarish; for example, Anthony (2007: 164) describes the periodisation of the Aeneolithic Cucuteni-Tripolye culture of Ukraine and Moldova (parts of the USSR before 1991), and Romania:

There is a Borges-like dreaminess to the Cucuteni pottery sequence: one phase (Cucuteni C) is not a phase at all but rather a type of pottery probably made outside the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture; another phase (Cucuteni A1) was defined before it was found, and never was found.

Type
Book reviews
Information
Antiquity , Volume 91 , Issue 360 , December 2017 , pp. 1652 - 1655
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anthony, D.W. 2007. The horse, the wheel, and language. Princeton (NJ) & Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bulkin, V.A., Klejn, L.S. & Lebedev, G.A.. 1982. Attainments and problems of Soviet archaeology. World Archaeology 13: 272–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.1982.9979834 Google Scholar
Fagan, B. 2003. Archaeologists: explorers of the human past. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Klejn, L.S. 1977. A panorama of theoretical archaeology. Current Anthropology 18: 1–42. https://doi.org/10.1086/201846 Google Scholar
Klejn, L.S. 2012a. Incorporeal heroes: the origins of Homeric images. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Klejn, L.S. 2012b. Soviet archaeology: schools, trends, and history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kuzmin, Y.V. 2015. The long and winding road: review of L.S. Klejn's Soviet archaeology : trends, schools, and history. Radiocarbon 57: v–x. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033822200058288 Google Scholar
Marx, K. 1899. Secret diplomatic history of the eighteenth century. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.Google Scholar
Milisauskas, S. 2017. Review of A Russian perspective on theoretical archaeology: the life and work of Leo S. Klejn by Stephen Leach. Journal of Anthropological Research 73: 92–94. https://doi.org/10.1086/690536 Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. & Bahn, P.. 2016. Archaeology: theories, methods and practice (7th edition). London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Taylor, T. 1994. Conversations with Leo Klejn. Current Anthropology 34: 723–35. https://doi.org/10.1086/204218 Google Scholar
Trigger, B.G. 2006. A history of archaeological thought (2nd edition). New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511813016 Google Scholar