Sunday, November 25, 2012

K.K.Kostsyushko-Valyuzhinich and his reports for the Imperial Archaeological Commission

K.K.Kostsyushko-Valyuzhinich and his reports for the Imperial Archaeological Commission - К. К. Косцюшко-Валюжинич и его отчеты Императорской Археологической Комиссии
http://www.kostsyushko.chersonesos.org/graph/slogan_en.jpg 
Publication of the materials from the archive of Karl Kazimirovich Kostsyushko-Valyuzhinich, the founder of the museum in Chersonesos, was rather complicated task. Everyone who participated in this project has put a part of his / her heart into it. We all worked hard, and you can see the result now. 

Use of this website allows you to trace how the scale of the studies increased year after year (you can see special time line above), how the excavations were recorded, how Chersonesos we know now was raising from under many-centuries-deep strata. However, the finds images of those are presented on this site scattered through different museums long ago, so they could hardly be brought together in reality. We collected them for you in " Photographs " section, though the drawings of the areas excavated every year are accumulated in " Drawings "

Texts section is digital version of the " Reports " of the excavations in Chersonesos, published by the Imperial Archaeological Commission in printed form. " Manuscripts " incorporate photos of manuscript reports by Kostsyushko; he made his reports in two copies: the first was sent to the Archaeological Commission, and the second remained in the archive of the museum established by him. The Commission developed printed version of the report on the background of Kostsyushko's manuscripts. 

From 1901, the Archaeological Commission begun to issue, apart from the Reports, its Proceedings (Izvestiya Arkheologicheskoy Komissii) that published the results of the excavations as scholarly articles. Several Kostsyushko's reports from this issue (they were not annual), as well as his articles from the Crimean newspapers have make the " Publications " section. 

Those who are interested in ancient inscriptions on stones will find some useful data in the " Squeezes ": here you can view photos of paper imprints of the inscriptions, which Kostsyushko made with great skill. Now squeezed are the most fragile articles within the collection and rarely appeared in scholars' hands because of that reason. Virtual squeezes will be much more available, and one inscription is presented as three-dimensional reconstruction

In order to make the elements of systematic excavations known to most large circle of history and archaeology lovers, we need to make English translation of the huge number of pages from our website. All the translations have been made by historian and archaeologist, in result of which the nineteenth century archaeological " Lexicon " developed. It will help modern reader understand some specific features of the style of the reports.
Here is the brief guide to our website, which is called after the most popular address to Kostsyushko from the correspondence: "Dear Karl Kazimirovich…" Brief biographic essay will make our website's visitors understand why this person was so respected by the contemporaries. 

Although the process of he site development was very hard for all of us, Kostsyushko's industry and his utterly devotion to his work were the great example to us. In the year 2007 we will celebrate the 160th birthday and the 100th anniversary of the death of Kostsyushko. By publishing this resource in the Web, we would like to honour these dates and to make Kostsyushko's life and merits widely known to the public. 

We are thankful for help and support to the authorities of the National Preserve of Tauric Chersonesos, our colleagues from the Institute of Classical Archaeology and Harry Ransom Humanity Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Our gratitude is to wonderful person Glenn Mack who inspired us for realization of this and many other projects.
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 See also: Open Access Journal: Отчеты Археологической Комиссии


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