“Once Again, Kargaly Gave Us a Lot of Surprises...” (notes on the 2002 Season)

Abstract

Thanks to Ye.N. Chernykh’s long-term explorations, the Kargaly mining and metallurgical center located near Orenburg has become known all over the world. The archaeological expedition led by Ye.N. Chernykh explored the Kargaly site for a number of years, and received significant, in many ways unique material. I would like to emphasize that this material was published rather quickly, which also contributed to the increase of Kargaly’s fame. It was not superfluous to hold the Kargaly International Field Symposium in the field in July-August 2002, which gave an opportunity for many specialists from a number of countries possible to witness the power and diversity of this mining and metallurgical center. As emphasized by Ye.N. Chernykh, “We needed to demonstrate to the participants of such a Symposium the real objects of exploration in the field, instead of studying them using diagrams and photographs only. All this prompted us to organize a full-fledged excavation in the summer of 2002 . As a result, we managed to get a new and – which has already become a tradition – enormous material”. Thus, the notes presented here describe the last season of excavations at Kargaly (2002), but not entirely. It only touches upon S.V. Kuzminykh’s participation in these explorations. The fact is that S.V. Kuzminykh, whose anniversary these collected works are dedicated to, participated as the closest Ye.N. Chernykh’s assistant during the whole period of the Kargaly explorations and later – as a co-author – in many publications related to the Kargaly. The range of interests of S.V. Kuzminykh is wide, and one of the significant places among them is occupied by the questions of history of archaeology. In this case, the person whose anniversary is celebrated is an object of study himself, since the Kargaly expeditions and the activities of all their participants have already become pages of history of archaeology, and the purpose of the notes is to add colors to these interesting pages.

Keywords

• history of archaeology
• kargaly
• ye.n. chernykh
• s.v. kuzminykh
• excavations
• mine workings
• mine
• photos