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Dig Those Artifacts!
by By Anton Razmakhnin
source: http://mnweekly.rian.ru/local/20070830/55271247.html
The people of Moscow can rejoice: our city has caught up with Veliky Novgorod. Birch bark documents have been found in Moscow. Extensive excavation work at the Kremlin this summer has uncovered two such letters, which confirms that not only Novgorod but other Russian towns had a considerable amount of literate residents.
The archaeologists' work in the Moscow Kremlin during the 2007 season is unprecedented for Russia. It was conducted on an extensive area, at a highly professional level and without undue haste.
Other layers were studied earlier, during 19th century construction, but it was not a study in the modern sense of the word. Finds were extracted and their location described only partially.
Modern excavation technology is low-impact, uses high fidelity photo recording and comprehensive, detailed registration of the finds.
Many of these techniques were already in the scientific arsenal in the 1920s-30s, when the Kremlin was hit by a wave of demolitions with new structures put in the place of the old, but no archeological studies were officially conducted at the time: during the reconstruction work at the Kremlin, researchers had to act at their own risk. Artifacts were literally pulled out from under the bulldozer. The same was true
in the 1950s, when the House of Congresses was built there.
This year, excavation work was conducted in the Tainitsky Garden, one of the Kremlin's largest undeveloped areas.
At different historical periods, this site accommodated the residence of Kremlin church clergy,
a cemetery, and the houses of government clerks. Well preserved wooden structures were excavated from the impacted layers of culture, which is about 10 meters deep.
However, it will be impossible to preserve the rich finds where they now sit, since an administrative building is planned for the site.
So the log huts will be exhibited at the Kolomenskoye open air museum in southern Moscow. In addition to architectural monuments, numerous implements, utensils, and household effects were discovered.
But such excavations are not made for their own sake. The principal goal of comprehensive architectural studies is to shed light on particular issues, written information, which had been feared lost.
In particular, there are few registers of Kremlin residents with the indication of their names and occupations, but after the latest excavation, historians will receive a treasure trove of information.
The success of this architectural season was largely due to the enthusiasts who managed to obtain excavation permission from the Kremlin administration, thus delaying the developers' bulldozers.
The archaeologists were provided ample time, and they used the opportunity to maximum effect.
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