Metadata : Imperial Archeological Commission (Russia Archeological Commission)
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- Institute of the History of Material Culture
- Holding institution (official language):
- Институт истории материальной культуры
- Postal address:
- 191186, St. Petersburg, Dvortsovaia nab., d. 18
- Phone number:
- (812) 571-50-92
- Web address:
- http://www.archeo.ru
- Email:
- admin@archeo.ru
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- Institute of the History of Material Culture
- Holding institution (official language):
- Институт истории материальной культуры
- Postal address:
- 191186, St. Petersburg, Dvortsovaia nab., d. 18
- Phone number:
- (812) 571-50-92
- Web address:
- http://www.archeo.ru
- Email:
- admin@archeo.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 1
- Title:
- Imperial Archeological Commission (Russia Archeological Commission)
- Title (official language):
- Императорская археологическая комиссия (Российская археологическая комиссия)
- Creator/accumulator:
- Imperial Archeological Commission (Russia Archeological Commission)
- Date(s):
- 1870/1919
- Language:
- Russian
- Extent:
- 100,006 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Photographic images
- Graphic material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- Material in this fonds that pertains to Jewish and Karaite history and culture include two photo-prints from the collection of the photographer I. F. Barshchevsky (album O. 493), annotated as “A bound Hebrew manuscript at the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg” (undated); a photograph by the photographer D. I. Ermakov captioned “A stone with a Hebrew inscription discovered in Mtskheta in 1872” (albums Q. 367, Q. 481; undated); albums of photographs (O. 656, O. 318, O. 319, O. 322, O. 328, O. 656) taken by I. P. Chistiakov during expeditions led by the architect, restoration specialist, and archaeologist P. P. Pokryshkin and organised by the Imperial Archeological Commission; among others, these include photographic prints and negatives with images of exteriors and interiors of synagogues in the towns of Shchebreshin and Chelm (Lublin province) (1907, 1911), Orsha (Mogilev province) (1908), Druia (Vil’na province) (1910), and the Jewish cemetery in the town of Ovruch (Volhynia province) (1908); a photograph of the building of the Third Women’s Jewish School in Minsk (album O. 288; undated); photographs taken by the architectural historian G. K. Lukomskii (albums O. 471 and O. 472) of synagogues in the towns of Ostrog, Zaslav (Iziaslavl’) (Volhynia province), and Gomel’ (Mogilev province); rows of small buildings in the town of Kremenets (Volhynia province), with a storefront sign of the commercial enterprises of the brothers L. S. and G. Landesberg; the rabbi’s house in the town of Korostyshev (Kiev province), etc. (1900-12). Album O. 710 contains photographs taken by the archaeologist N. I. Repnikov during a trip to Crimea on behalf of the ethnography department of the State Russian Museum; these show Karaite monuments, including the exterior and interiors of the kenesa in the city of Evpatoriia, the cemetery in the village of Biya Sala, views of Chufut-Kale, including the Valley of Jehoshaphat, “the Karaite quarter of the city”, the Karaite cemetery, as well as a stele in the territory of the kenesa featuring the engraved text of a decree by Emperor Nicholas II regarding military conscription duties of Karaites (1913). Album O. 469 includes a photograph annotated “Chufut-Kale. Entrance gate: overview” (undated). Album O. 400, donated to the Imperial Archeological Commission in 1916 by the art critic L. A. Moiseev, contains photographs of the facade and interior of the synagogue in the town of Śniadowo (Łomża province) (undated). The photo collection of the architect D. A. Kryzhanovskii has photographs that show, among other things, an “internal view – the portal” of the building of the Choral Synagogue in St. Petersburg (undated). Album O. 472 includes a postcard titled “Vitebsk. The Great Synagogue and Suvorov Street” (undated); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Imperial Archaeological Commission was established under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by decree of Emperor Alexander II on 2 February 1859 for the purpose of “searching for antiquities pertaining primarily to Russian history and the life of peoples who once inhabited the space now occupied by Russia, and collecting information about folk as well as other monuments of antiquity in the country” and developing methods of “scientifically evaluating antiquities discovered”. The first chair of the Imperial Archaeological Commission was Count S. G. Stroganov; from 1882 to 1886, it was headed by A. A. Vasil’chikov, director of the Imperial Hermitage, and from 1886 by Count A. A. Bobrinskii. Its staff included the archaeologists P. P. Pokryshkin, A. A. Spitsyn, B. V. Farmakovskii, V. V. Latyshev, and others. In 1889, the Imperial Archaeological Commission was granted the exclusive right to allow and control excavations on state, urban and peasant lands. It conducted work pertaining to the protection and restoration of major monuments of antiquity and published annual reports from 1859 to 1918, and from 1901 to 1918, its News (Izvestia). It also produced the series Materials on the Archeology of Russia (37 volumes were published from 1866 to 1918) and individual publications. In 1918, the Imperial Archaeological Commission became the basis of the newly established Russian State Archaeological Commission.
The Institute of the History of Material Culture is the institutional successor to the Imperial Archaeological Commission established under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by decree of Emperor Alexander II on 2 February 1859 for the purpose of “searching for antiquities pertaining primarily to Russian history and the life of peoples who once inhabited the space now occupied by Russia; and collecting information about folk as well as other monuments of antiquity in the country,” and developing methods of “scientifically evaluating antiquities discovered”. The first chair of the Imperial Archaeological Commission was Count S G Stroganov, from 1882 to 1886 it was headed by A A Vasil’chikov, director of the Imperial Hermitage, and from 1886 by Count A A Bobrinskii. Its staff included the archaeologists P P Pokryshkin, A A Spitsyn, B V Farmakovskii, V V Latyshev and others. In 1889, the Imperial Archaeological Commission was granted the exclusive right to allow and control excavations on state, urban and peasant lands. It conducted work pertaining to the protection and restoration of major monuments of antiquity, and published annual reports from 1859 to 1918 as well as from 1901 to 1918, its News (Izvestia). It also produced the series Materials on the Archeology of Russia (37 volumes were published from 1866-1918) and individual publications. In 1918, the Imperial Archaeological Commission became the basis of the newly established Russian State Archaeological Commission. In 1919, it was abolished and the leadership function in Soviet archeology was transferred to the newly organised Russian Academy of the History of Material Culture in Petrograd, reorganised in 1926 as the State Academy of the History of Material Culture (GAIMK). In July 1937, the GAIMK was in turn reorganised as the Institute of the History of Material Culture within the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad, with a branch in Moscow. In October 1937, the presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences approved the institute’s structure as part of the History and Philosophy Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1943, the institute’s directorate was transferred to Moscow and a statute was adopted ratifying the institute’s two branches in Moscow and Leningrad. The presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences ratified the Leningrad branch of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which in 1959 was reorganised as the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, with the Leningrad branch preserved as a component thereof. In 1991, by decision of the presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Leningrad branch was reorganised as an independent archaeological institution, with its former name, the Institute of the History of Material Culture, restored. The Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences consists of five departments, two laboratories and a research archive, which includes manuscript and photograph departments, with 174 fonds containing manuscript materials, cartographic and graphic documents, and drawings and photographs.
1859 should be considered the start date of the formation of the photo archive of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences should – this was the year of the establishment of the Imperial Archeological Commission, whose collection of photographs and negatives formed the basis for the photo archive collection. It contains over 1,200,000 items (negatives, positives and films). It is the oldest in Russia and the only specialised photo archive in the Russian Academy of Sciences system. The archive contains documentation of archaeological works in the Russian Empire and the USSR until 1945 and materials from expeditions from the period that followed. During the reorganisations of several Soviet institutions in the 1920s-30s, the photo archive received collections of the State Museum Fund, the Glavnauka Restoration Studio, the monuments preservation section of the Committee on the Arts and Committee to Popularise Art Publications, and collections from the Shuvalov Family Palace-Museum and the libraries of the Winter and Marble Palaces. The photo archive is organised as a collection of photos, negatives and postcards in albums of different formats, designated by the indices “Q” and “O” and numbered; the photos in albums are numbered consecutively. There are card catalogues arranged by author, archaeology and geography. There is a supplemental system, based on inventory records, for negatives and photographs. The numbering and ordering of negatives and photographs taken, for instance, during the same expedition do not correspond to the numbering and arrangement of these materials in the albums.
- Access points: locations:
- Biya Sala
- Chelm
- Crimea
- Druia
- Evpatoriia
- Gomel’
- Korostyshev
- Kremenets
- Minsk
- Mtskheta
- Orsha
- Ostrog
- Ovruch
- Shchebreshin
- Śniadowo
- St Petersburg
- Vitebsk
- Zaslav
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds is arranged in departmental card files by geography and document type.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Reference number:
- F. 1
- Title:
- Imperial Archeological Commission (Russia Archeological Commission)
- Title (official language):
- Императорская археологическая комиссия (Российская археологическая комиссия)
- Creator/accumulator:
- Imperial Archeological Commission (Russia Archeological Commission)
- Date(s):
- 1870/1919
- Language:
- Russian
- Extent:
- 100,006 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Photographic images
- Graphic material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- Material in this fonds that pertains to Jewish and Karaite history and culture include two photo-prints from the collection of the photographer I. F. Barshchevsky (album O. 493), annotated as “A bound Hebrew manuscript at the Imperial Public Library in St. Petersburg” (undated); a photograph by the photographer D. I. Ermakov captioned “A stone with a Hebrew inscription discovered in Mtskheta in 1872” (albums Q. 367, Q. 481; undated); albums of photographs (O. 656, O. 318, O. 319, O. 322, O. 328, O. 656) taken by I. P. Chistiakov during expeditions led by the architect, restoration specialist, and archaeologist P. P. Pokryshkin and organised by the Imperial Archeological Commission; among others, these include photographic prints and negatives with images of exteriors and interiors of synagogues in the towns of Shchebreshin and Chelm (Lublin province) (1907, 1911), Orsha (Mogilev province) (1908), Druia (Vil’na province) (1910), and the Jewish cemetery in the town of Ovruch (Volhynia province) (1908); a photograph of the building of the Third Women’s Jewish School in Minsk (album O. 288; undated); photographs taken by the architectural historian G. K. Lukomskii (albums O. 471 and O. 472) of synagogues in the towns of Ostrog, Zaslav (Iziaslavl’) (Volhynia province), and Gomel’ (Mogilev province); rows of small buildings in the town of Kremenets (Volhynia province), with a storefront sign of the commercial enterprises of the brothers L. S. and G. Landesberg; the rabbi’s house in the town of Korostyshev (Kiev province), etc. (1900-12). Album O. 710 contains photographs taken by the archaeologist N. I. Repnikov during a trip to Crimea on behalf of the ethnography department of the State Russian Museum; these show Karaite monuments, including the exterior and interiors of the kenesa in the city of Evpatoriia, the cemetery in the village of Biya Sala, views of Chufut-Kale, including the Valley of Jehoshaphat, “the Karaite quarter of the city”, the Karaite cemetery, as well as a stele in the territory of the kenesa featuring the engraved text of a decree by Emperor Nicholas II regarding military conscription duties of Karaites (1913). Album O. 469 includes a photograph annotated “Chufut-Kale. Entrance gate: overview” (undated). Album O. 400, donated to the Imperial Archeological Commission in 1916 by the art critic L. A. Moiseev, contains photographs of the facade and interior of the synagogue in the town of Śniadowo (Łomża province) (undated). The photo collection of the architect D. A. Kryzhanovskii has photographs that show, among other things, an “internal view – the portal” of the building of the Choral Synagogue in St. Petersburg (undated). Album O. 472 includes a postcard titled “Vitebsk. The Great Synagogue and Suvorov Street” (undated); etc.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Imperial Archaeological Commission was established under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by decree of Emperor Alexander II on 2 February 1859 for the purpose of “searching for antiquities pertaining primarily to Russian history and the life of peoples who once inhabited the space now occupied by Russia, and collecting information about folk as well as other monuments of antiquity in the country” and developing methods of “scientifically evaluating antiquities discovered”. The first chair of the Imperial Archaeological Commission was Count S. G. Stroganov; from 1882 to 1886, it was headed by A. A. Vasil’chikov, director of the Imperial Hermitage, and from 1886 by Count A. A. Bobrinskii. Its staff included the archaeologists P. P. Pokryshkin, A. A. Spitsyn, B. V. Farmakovskii, V. V. Latyshev, and others. In 1889, the Imperial Archaeological Commission was granted the exclusive right to allow and control excavations on state, urban and peasant lands. It conducted work pertaining to the protection and restoration of major monuments of antiquity and published annual reports from 1859 to 1918, and from 1901 to 1918, its News (Izvestia). It also produced the series Materials on the Archeology of Russia (37 volumes were published from 1866 to 1918) and individual publications. In 1918, the Imperial Archaeological Commission became the basis of the newly established Russian State Archaeological Commission.
The Institute of the History of Material Culture is the institutional successor to the Imperial Archaeological Commission established under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by decree of Emperor Alexander II on 2 February 1859 for the purpose of “searching for antiquities pertaining primarily to Russian history and the life of peoples who once inhabited the space now occupied by Russia; and collecting information about folk as well as other monuments of antiquity in the country,” and developing methods of “scientifically evaluating antiquities discovered”. The first chair of the Imperial Archaeological Commission was Count S G Stroganov, from 1882 to 1886 it was headed by A A Vasil’chikov, director of the Imperial Hermitage, and from 1886 by Count A A Bobrinskii. Its staff included the archaeologists P P Pokryshkin, A A Spitsyn, B V Farmakovskii, V V Latyshev and others. In 1889, the Imperial Archaeological Commission was granted the exclusive right to allow and control excavations on state, urban and peasant lands. It conducted work pertaining to the protection and restoration of major monuments of antiquity, and published annual reports from 1859 to 1918 as well as from 1901 to 1918, its News (Izvestia). It also produced the series Materials on the Archeology of Russia (37 volumes were published from 1866-1918) and individual publications. In 1918, the Imperial Archaeological Commission became the basis of the newly established Russian State Archaeological Commission. In 1919, it was abolished and the leadership function in Soviet archeology was transferred to the newly organised Russian Academy of the History of Material Culture in Petrograd, reorganised in 1926 as the State Academy of the History of Material Culture (GAIMK). In July 1937, the GAIMK was in turn reorganised as the Institute of the History of Material Culture within the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad, with a branch in Moscow. In October 1937, the presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences approved the institute’s structure as part of the History and Philosophy Department of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1943, the institute’s directorate was transferred to Moscow and a statute was adopted ratifying the institute’s two branches in Moscow and Leningrad. The presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences ratified the Leningrad branch of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which in 1959 was reorganised as the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, with the Leningrad branch preserved as a component thereof. In 1991, by decision of the presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, the Leningrad branch was reorganised as an independent archaeological institution, with its former name, the Institute of the History of Material Culture, restored. The Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences consists of five departments, two laboratories and a research archive, which includes manuscript and photograph departments, with 174 fonds containing manuscript materials, cartographic and graphic documents, and drawings and photographs.
1859 should be considered the start date of the formation of the photo archive of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences should – this was the year of the establishment of the Imperial Archeological Commission, whose collection of photographs and negatives formed the basis for the photo archive collection. It contains over 1,200,000 items (negatives, positives and films). It is the oldest in Russia and the only specialised photo archive in the Russian Academy of Sciences system. The archive contains documentation of archaeological works in the Russian Empire and the USSR until 1945 and materials from expeditions from the period that followed. During the reorganisations of several Soviet institutions in the 1920s-30s, the photo archive received collections of the State Museum Fund, the Glavnauka Restoration Studio, the monuments preservation section of the Committee on the Arts and Committee to Popularise Art Publications, and collections from the Shuvalov Family Palace-Museum and the libraries of the Winter and Marble Palaces. The photo archive is organised as a collection of photos, negatives and postcards in albums of different formats, designated by the indices “Q” and “O” and numbered; the photos in albums are numbered consecutively. There are card catalogues arranged by author, archaeology and geography. There is a supplemental system, based on inventory records, for negatives and photographs. The numbering and ordering of negatives and photographs taken, for instance, during the same expedition do not correspond to the numbering and arrangement of these materials in the albums.
- Access points: locations:
- Biya Sala
- Chelm
- Crimea
- Druia
- Evpatoriia
- Gomel’
- Korostyshev
- Kremenets
- Minsk
- Mtskheta
- Orsha
- Ostrog
- Ovruch
- Shchebreshin
- Śniadowo
- St Petersburg
- Vitebsk
- Zaslav
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds is arranged in departmental card files by geography and document type.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
