Peculiarities of Periodization in the Modern National Historiography of Underwater Archeology

Abstract

The article deals with the historiographical review of various materials describing the recent outcomes of national underwater archaeological organizations activity. Attention is given to the periodization issues caused by the key influence exerted on underwater archaeological work on technological advances. It gives a brief description of scientific papers that use underwater archaeology conclusions and characterize research methods applied in dating, reconstruction and museumification. The main part of the work is determined by the characteristics of the scientific and practical heritage and biographical data of individual scientists, whose name is associated with the development of the national school of underwater archaeology in space and time. Professor R. A. Orbeli and Professor V. D. Blavatsky are traditionally considered to be the ideological inspirers and the first organizers of the systematic study of the underwater cultural and historical heritage of our country. The assessment of the activities of these scientists, as well as the existing bibliographic base, on the basis of which the historiography of the issue under consideration is formed, organically forms the main part of this article. This article pays sufficient attention to the history of studying underwater archaeological research from the first practical attempts based on empirical methods to the current state of Affairs in the discipline, using a wide range of scientific research: GPS navigation, magnetometers, side-view sonars, unguided underwater vehicles, etc. The article conclusion is the conditional birth of historiography along with the emergence of unrelated collections of specialized literature, where indirect references to underwater landmarks are presented firstly, and, with the development of archaeological science, separate analytical and methodological works devoted entirely to underwater historical landmarks research appear.

Keywords

• periodization
• historiography
• underwater archaeology
• research on underwater historical landmarks
• materials analysis