Primeval Archaeological Expedition

The Primeval Archaeological Expedition has operated since the early 1990s (originally within the framework of the National Center for Archaeological Studies of the Institute of History under the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences, and presently – the Institute of Archaeology named after A. Kh. Khalikov of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences).

The expedition is annually formed on the basis of several groups headed by research associates of the Department of Primeval Archeology of the Institute of Archaeology named after A. Kh. Khalikov. The primary areas of field studies conducted by the expedition are as follows: 1) comprehensive studies of primeval sites, settlements, barrows and burial grounds in the Volga-Kama and the neighboring regions in association with soil scientists, paleogeographers, archeozoologists, geologists and representatives of other natural sciences, 2) surveying, salvage and rescue excavations of deteriorating primeval sites in the abrasion scarp of Kuibyshev and Nizhnekamsk reservoirs. The results of studies conducted by the groups of the Primeval Expedition were followed by a number of articles and publications published in the journals “Russian Archaeology” and “Volga Archaeology”, materials of the All-Russian Archaeological Congresses, a number of All-Russian and international research conferences, as well as in special collections of the “Archaeology and Natural Sciences of Tatarstan” series (Books 3 and 4) and the collection “The Middle Volga and Southern Urals: Man and Nature in Antiquity”.

The groups of the Primeval Expedition perform comprehensive, salvage and rescue interdisciplinary studies of the sites dating back to the Stone, Early Metal, Early Iron and Early Middle Ages, namely: Beganchik site, Dubovo-Grivskaya II, Pestrechinskaya II, Lobach V and Kurmanakovskaya IV sites; Kominternovsky No. 1 barrow; Maklasheevskoe II settlement, Gulyukovsky burial mound; Kamsko-Ustyinskoe (Lobach) I village, and a number of sites of the early Iron Age located in the Volga-Kama region.