Artemy Artsikhovsky, an outstanding scientist, specialist in Slavic-Russian archeology, was born 115 years ago.
Artemy Vladimirovich was born on December 13 (26), 1902 in St. Petersburg in the family of the famous botanist Vladimir Artsikhovsky. He studied at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Moscow University under the archaeologist Vasily Gorodtsov, later - in graduate school at the Research Institute of Archeology and Art History of the RANION, in 1929 he defended his Ph. D. information provided by chroniclers. In 1940 he defended his doctoral dissertation "Old Russian miniatures as a historical source."
The main scientific interest for Artsikhovsky was ancient Novgorod, which he began to explore together with Boris Rybakov, the expedition founded by Artsikhovsky is the oldest permanent archaeological expedition existing in our country.
The Artsikhovsky expedition carried out excavations in wide areas, so only the area of the Nerevsky excavation was 10 thousand square meters, - archaeologists kept in sight the estates and quarters of medieval Novgorod.
On July 26, 1951, Artsikhovsky discovered the first birch bark letter, this find became an additional and valuable source of information that made it possible to synthesize archeological data with materials from written sources on the history of Novgorod. The result of 25 years of work related to the discovered letters was their seven-volume academic edition with scientific commentary.
Artemy Vladimirovich - the initiator of the formation of the Department of Archeology at Moscow University (1939) and its first head. More than one generation of Russian archaeologists studied on the textbooks “Introduction to Archeology” and “Fundamentals of Archeology” prepared by him. Artsikhovsky made a huge contribution to the formation and development of archeology as a university science in our country.
Artemy Vladimirovich died on February 17, 1978 in Moscow.
