Textbook on the history of science aside from science

Abstract

The article is a review of the textbook on the history of Russian archaeology, prepared by A.S. Skripkin, professor of Volgograd State University, a well-known archaeologist specializing in the study of the Sarmatian tribes. The textbook was issued by the "Urait" publishing company in 2017. The first part, dominating in volume, is devoted to the history of the development of Russian archaeology since the XVIII century to the last quarter of the XX century. The second part gives a brief review of the topic, well-known to the author - the history of archaeological research in the Lower Volga region in the same chronological period. However, the main problem of the reviewed publication is the author's failure to use a huge number of papers published on this subject during the last 25 years. Almost all the information contained in the first section of the textbook was borrowed from the books of A.A. Formozov, G.S. Lebedev, V.F.Gening, A.D. Pryakhin, published in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, in the years passed since then, a whole direction has arisen in Russian archaeology, connected with the study of various aspects of its history. A significant range of monographic publications, collections of articles and conference materials were published, more than fifty candidate and doctoral dissertations were defended. Unfortunately, all this turned out to be beyond the scope of A.S. Skripkin. Therefore, there are numerous out-of-date ideas concerning various subjects connected with the formation and development of Russian archaeology. Furthermore, the text contains a considerable amount of factual errors, inaccuracies, misprints.

Keywords:

archaeology, history of archaeology, Russia, textbook, historiography, university course