Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 51 (1) 2023   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2023.51.1.100-107

Annotation:  Findings from the Paleolithic Studies in Siberia The Earliest Paleolithic Assemblages from Denisova Cave in the Altai Upper Paleolithic of the Yenisey: New Discoveries, Old Debates Middle Neolithic Burials in Baikal-Yenisey Siberia: Problems of Cultural Identity and Genesis The Most Important Archaeological Discoveries Relating to the Neolithic to Early Iron Age Cultures o Possibilities of Direct Dating of Rock Art in the Khakass-Minusinsk Basin On the Chronological Position of Siba Culture Metal Artifacts, Northwest China The Current Model of Historical and Cultural Processes in the Stone and Bronze Ages of the Ob-Irtysh The Pazyryk Dwelling D.G. Messerschmidt’s Collection of Siberian Antiquities in Drawings at the St. Petersburg Archive of The Final Bronze Age in the Minusinsk Basin A Study of Silk Fabric from the Xiongnu Age Under-Headdress Discovered at Yaloman II Mound 51 in the Origin and Evolution of the Earliest Iron-Smelting Technologies in the Khakass-Minusinsk Basin “D.G. Messerschmidt’s Cups” Use of Parts of Ram Carcasses in the Funerary Practices of the Baikal Region Population in the 13th–   

D.G. Messerschmidt’s Collection of Siberian Antiquities
in Drawings at the St. Petersburg Archive
of the Academy of Sciences

I.V. Tunkina

St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Kievskaya 5, bldg. 9, St. Petersburg, 196084, Russia

This study focuses on the drawings of items collected during D.G. Messerschmidt’s first multidisciplinary expedition to Siberia in 1719-1727. Pictures of the artifacts have been preserved among the documents held by the Academy of Sciences Archive in the personal papers of the traveler, which includes his field journals, the appendices of his reports to the Pharmaceutical (Medical) Registry, and a large handwritten treatise “Sibiria Perlustrata” (1727), outlining the expedition’s findings. In 1728, Messerschmidt’s archaeological collection was included as part of Peter the Great’s Siberian Collection, exhibited at the Kunstkamera. Watercolor and pencil drawings and engravings depicting the exhibits are identified. Handwritten descriptions and drawings of the items have made it possible to a certain extent to reconstruct the first encyclopedist’s Siberian archaeological collection, which perished during the 1747 fire at the Kunstkamera. As Messerschmidt’s graphic works demonstrate, he documented items spanning the time from the Bronze Age to the Late Middle Ages and covering the territory from the Urals to the Trans-Baikal region, including things imported from Western Europe, China, and Central Asia. Also, he collected archaeological items representing virtually all cultures of the Minusinsk Basin. It is concluded that in the first third of the 18th century, Messerschmidt’s collection was the world’s largest and most representative assemblage of artifacts from northeastern Eurasia.

Keywords: Academy of Sciences Archive, D.G. Messerschmidt, personal papers, Kunstkamera, Peter the Great’s Siberian Collection, drawings of archaeological artifacts