The Congresses

Abstract

The fifteen archeological congresses that met every three years from 1869 to 1911 were the singular sustained professional conferences held in Tsarist Russia. Organized under the auspices of the Imperial Moscow Archeological Society, they were convened in cities around the empire, from the Baltic trading port of Riga to the industrialized center of Ekaterinoslav in the Donbas. Congressional delegates invariably found themselves enmeshed in the myriad transformations that the empire underwent in its last four decades. Sought after by civic leaders and attended by amateurs as well as scholars, the congresses proved pivotal to archeology’s emergence as a science of society by the ways in which they successfully integrated the discipline into the broader socio-political context. Characterized by their interdisciplinary nature, punctuated with exhibitions, and with a pronounced orientation toward travel, they proved crucial to the popularization of archeology. The timing and location of these congresses regularly coincide with major events throughout the empire, but to see this as merely a compilation of coincidences is to overlook the degree to which archeology was becoming reflective of numerous concerns, simultaneously national and imperial, that were stirring the political imagination.