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How to find an ancient settlement with the help of photographs, what did the monks of the XNUMXth century eat, and what did Kulikovo Field actually look like? Understanding how archeological finds help to study history
Modern historians not only study individual facts, but also build a big picture out of them, thanks to which we begin to see world history in a different way. For example, a few decades ago, the cultural map of the Bronze Age of mankind (3300-600 BC) included several civilizations – Egypt, Mesopotamia, China. Everything that was and happened around was practically not investigated. Journalist and historian Mikhail Rodin compares these regions and events with “dark matter”, which historians and archaeologists are gradually learning.
For example, Mesopotamia – the first state of the Bronze Age – did not have the resources to produce bronze. The country depended on the supply of copper from Cyprus, tin – from the territory of modern Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. The Kargaly mines, which are located on the territory of the modern Orenburg region, were then the largest supplier of copper to the west. New knowledge appears largely due to the joint work of historians and archaeologists.
How historians get information “out of nothing”
Now scientists can get information from a minimum of historical samples. So, soil scientist Tatyana Romanis is studying thin sections – thin strips of minerals or rocks glued to glass. Thanks to archaeologists, she learns from which period the sample is from. Then the scientist examines the thin section under a microscope and understands whether there was a settlement in the place where it was brought from. This is possible thanks to macro-remains – for example, crushed pieces of bone. Tatyana determines what happened to the bones before they hit the soil, and what happened later – conditionally, whether they were walked on or not.
Another modern method that historians use is photogrammetry. With the help of a copter, several photographs of the area are taken from different angles. Then common points are searched for in all photographs and their exact location in space is determined. It was in this way that researchers, including Leonid Vyazov, found the remains of the settlement of the Imenkovskaya culture in the forest in the Volga region. According to some hypotheses, its carriers belonged to the Slavic ethnic group. When the plants were removed from the photographs, the former streets, the pits from the buildings standing in a row, the rampart of the settlement became clearly visible.
In addition, military archeology is now developing – the study of places of famous battles. One of the representatives of this trend is the historian Oleg Dvurechensky. He studied the geography of the Kulikovo field, restoring the landscape of 1380. To do this, experts used paleolandscape methods – they made many small excavations, pits, to see how the soil looks like. As a result, it turned out that in the XIV century the field was not as large and even as it is now. It had only three long, non-marshy sections where a battle was possible. Two of them are limited by water, and only one has approaches from all sides. It was there that later the remains of weapons of the late XIV-early XV centuries were found.
These examples are a good demonstration that history and archeology are combined not only with each other, but also with other sciences, including soil science, genetics, physics, chemistry, mathematics and data analysis, statistics, and so on. A modern historian must master all these methods at least at the level so that he can understand what sciences he needs and correctly identify their tasks to various specialists.
How archeology and history merge into a single science
Previously, it was believed that archeology and history are two separate sciences that deal with different things. History studies events, while archeology studies processes. But in the modern world, it is obvious that the historian puts individual events into processes, and written sources – chronicles, diaries, and so on – are not enough.
For example, written sources cannot describe in detail the life of monks in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra of the 2019th-XNUMXth centuries. But the finds of archaeologists can help with this. So, in XNUMX, two outdoor brick ovens were discovered there, in which food was cooked for the brethren and pilgrims.
And what exactly did the inhabitants of the Lavra eat, the found remains of latrines told – it turned out that the monks of the XNUMXth century ate a lot of berries, especially strawberries. Such discoveries help to more clearly imagine the structure of nutrition, the structure of life and economy – up to the structure of society and even economic ties. The deeper archaeologists dig, the more ancient societies are revealed to historians. Therefore, Mikhail Rodin believes, it will not work to separate these two sciences.
Researchers ask new questions and challenge related disciplines to come up with new methods. That is, scientists are in a constant process of inventing new tools. It is already quite well known how the historical process developed – and now historians are at the stage of studying “dark matter”. This new information will generate many new theories and, perhaps, then historical science will reach a new level.