Archeology as a “Russian Science”

Abstract

Russian scholars had regularly advocated for a counterbalance to western intellectual hegemony, their genuine need for a “Russian” science deriving from the reality that Russians so often asked different questions of the same sources than did the westerners. Two themes flowed simultaneously as undercurrents in Russian archeology: Christianity and the East. By 1869 the “Christian East” had become a new typology in archeological circles, the two commingling in the 1880s when Russian archeology took the “Byzantine turn.” Subsequently, N. P. Kondakov’s theory of “iconography” laid the scientific basis for Byzantology, a new perspective on separating East from West. In 1896 Russia opened its only institute abroad, the Russian Archeological Institute in Constantinople. Significantly, the Caucasus presented a highly contested terrain, with Russians claiming that their proximity to the East gave them a heightened authority in the region, one that the West never recognized. This jockeying for position led both sides to make special territorial claims during World War I, actions that underscored how politicized this ideally objective social science had become.