I have to say I’m sorry but we have fixed prices.
Would you like to look how many applications for
the emigration to the prehistoric epoch we have?
We take our respected clients there only in groups
and can take only twelve pounds of baggage per person.
Otherwise we won’t be able to satisfy the demand.
The nearest group in which there is still one vacancy
will depart for the Ancient Stone Age on the 13th of next March.
Would you like to reserve a seat right now?
Karel Capek.
The Czech writer Karel Capek was not so wide of the mark when he imagined at the beginning of the XX century that opportunities of the contact with the generation’s deep past, the territories where they live would become magnetic, vitally important for the people of the future technocratic century. Our European neighbors have packed the local history of their territories in the bright cultural tourist offer for a long time already. The cognitive educational tourism joins to popular kinds of exotic and extremal tourism with confidence.
In our country this part of humanitarian knowledge is in the service of the state’s interests so far. The local government is not often actively interested in local historical heritage; the entrepreneurial sector hardly recognizes history as a possible object of capital investment. It is wrong. I am far from the intention to appeal to save science or, on the contrary, to turn everything into Disney Land for the sake of profit. We have distinct projects of putting our history and culture monuments into cultural circulation and able to involve population in the process of cognition and mastering of history at the same time. In other words - to come into succession with the wealth that are able to strengthen our identity, to help to bring up children and to provide with adequate recreation in unique places.
My story is about one of these projects, to be more exact, about a project idea. The case in point is the creation of the first archaeological park with the open-air museum, with the center of experimental archeology and the center of cognitive and recreational tourism in the territory of Khanty-Mansiysk autonomous okrug. And perhaps it will be the first one in Russia? At least I do not know such an experience.
The children archaeological expedition became the seed which the project grew up from. The scientific-research collective of SPA “The Northern Archeology” has been organizing it as a cultural initiative for 10 years already. Nefteuygansk Regional Committee for Youth’s Affairs was our first partner in 1996. The cooperation with us helped officials to solve problems of summer vacation organization for children from families of scanty means. The need for various forms of teen-agers summer leisure keeps being acute, especially in the North: in our country, unfortunately, not everybody can afford to take his children for vacation outside the region.
Our archaeological expedition for children is primordially thought as stationary. The place of its stationing is chosen not by chance. I would refer it to the category of unique places by the set of characteristics. Sorovskie Lakes have the status of the lands of historic and cultural destination. It means that they will never be subjected to industrial mastering. There are about 100 archaeological objects in the natural landscape. They are the evidence of uninterrupted colonization of the territory by the man since late Stone Age (V thousand years B.C.) till the middle of the XX century. The most of objects are well-defined on the surface. Besides, Sorovskie Lakes are notable as a bright natural object. Not stagnant, “alive” lakes still teem with fish. The southern lakeside of Bolshoe Sorovskoe is covered with reindeer mossy pineries rich in game and berry.
We are trying to do those things that respecting themselves European, American museums and national parks, having archaeological open-air museums, centers of experimental archeology and the packet of absorbing programs for children and adults attached to them, do. People are given the possibility to plunge into the past together with scientists, try to master ancient technologies of vital functions – making of tool and objects of utensils, and try themselves in ancient occupations. This type of educational leisure and life in nature when the man gets not only new knowledge but also cognizes himself is of great success among children. Teen-agers are the very grateful public if one can direct their energies correctly: they feel fine in the offered conditions; they are interested in everything and are taught everything very fast. Here we should note that these and other forms of introduction of children to history are considered as an important part of the national task in many countries.
Can we tell about such a humanitarian approach to the upbringing of the country’s future in Russia? In this article I would like to narrow the bounds of the problem at most to the bounds of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug in the territory of which our project develops. Historic adaptation, establishment of historical understanding of the land where people came to, finding of the small Homeland and through it the Homeland on the scale of country is the very important stage of humanitarian adaptation for the inhabitants of this raw material region who came mostly from the Outside[1] about 30-40 years ago. Perhaps these arguments are not so relevant in the central parts of the country, in the Russian North, in the North-West where everything is penetrated with tradition, where notions about the regional history and culture that was at least 200-300 years ago are alive. Chronotops connected with the Ural developing: Demidov plants, Bazhov tales, etc are alive in my native Ural. The man is born in this cultural environment, he absorbs it through images and tales and feels his connection with this land all his life.
Unfortunately, there is nothing like this in the territories of West-Siberian oil developing where a lot of new towns grew. And it seems to me it is very important here to give priority to the forms development of perception of cultural and historical heritage by population. First of all – by children. If we offer some cultural forms directed toward children then adults will perceive it with interest.
The history of the territory where the present Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug is situated is the ancient history by 95%. The middle Pri-Ob area is not Greece, not Egypt and not Turkey, and nevertheless these places are the archaeological Klondike and have been attracting Russian and foreign explores not by chance for more than 100 years. Only Fredric Martin, a Swedish anthropologist, took a score cartload with archaeological finds of here at the end of XIX century. They are displayed today in Stockholm Museum of History. The large collection of silver goods found in our lands is kept in the Hermitage. The Archaeological Museum of Ural University the exposition of which was formed by 80% of finds found in KhMAO territory has been opened recently. Meanwhile, the archeology is not almost shown in the expositions of the regional museums. As compared with other sections natural, ethnographic and of the epoch of oil developing the archaeology is practically absent. Those small, made very badly professionally show-cases with bronze figures that can be found somewhere in museums of local lore, history and economy of the okrug satisfy neither needs of the public nor the sights of the territory government. One of the most economically and socially prosperous territories cannot boast of a natural and archaeological park or an open-air museum!
At that the governor of Yugra Region Alexander Filipenko (as far as we can judge from his public statements and activity) maximizes development and popularization of historic and cultural heritage in the okrug. He initiated the Northern Archaeological Congress. During the celebration of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug anniversary A. Filipenko was not only the guest of our exhibition devoted to explorations of Mangasee site of ancient settlement and works at Sorovskie Lakes but he also considered necessary to show that exhibition to his guests personally displaying enviable knowledge at determination of displays. At last he set the task of the entry tourism development in the okrug. He instituted the grant system for the making of proper infrastructure and the tourist proposal. This year the service of the chief state inspector for historic and cultural heritage preservation of the okrug prepared the proposal about the creation of the okrug archaeological open-air museum.
But, unfortunately, the right strategy does not meet the understanding already at the first (!) level of executive authority. One needs only to analyze applications supported by the Tourism Committee of KhMAO for the last three years in order to make sure that ancient Yugra heritage is not among priority trends of the regional cultural policy. None of the numerous archaeological or architectural monuments of regional importance was brought in the cultural circulation in spite of their evident tourism potential and historians’ suggestions sounded from the rostrum of the Northern Archaeological Congress. It should be noted that Congress itself, being a unique event in the cultural sphere, is of secondary importance for departmental officials. According to their ideas firing on foreign pheasants in open-air cages or quasiexotics of driving on Khanty cervine team is everything that can rouse interest of distinguished guests of the okrug and potential tourists. They have nothing to show except the exposition in the okrug Museum of Nature and Man to the scientists who came to the Northern Archaeological Congress in Yugra for the second time from the whole world. And this happens in the presence of dozens of intact monuments of history and archeology covering the whole period of the ancient land developing by a man. The reason is not in the lack of people or ideas or the object of historic and cultural heritage itself, the reason is in the lack of understanding of these applications priority, none of which was not supported in departments of the Government of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug. There are some applications, applied by SPA “The Northern Archeology” in the development of children and cognitive tourism at Sorovskie Lakes that are left in the same heap of uninteresting projects. These projects also provide for introduction of a huge archaeological complex in a cultural and tourist circulation.
Nevertheless, we consider the children archaeological expedition as a continuously acting camp as a tool of the creation of the first archaeological museum in the okrug at the first stage – the stage of the territory clearance and objects preparation for study and display. Besides, the expedition can be considered both as a personnel program training future museum workers and as a public relation program attracting attention of the potential partners and visitors to the future cultural and tourist object.
1. The Place.
The location of the children expedition is in the region of Salym settlement, on Sorovskie lakesides. The striking preservation of sites of ancient settlement is explained by the wonderful circumstance: the isolation of their location from roads and objects of industry development. We should note that the settlement head V. Sapunov being the director of Salym forestry, having no extensive ideas about history, perhaps instinctively or because the place was too beautiful, singled out these territories from the logging area in his time. That is he prevented dimensioned logging works that would destroy the cultural level of mountains.
The historic researches on Sorovskie Lakes were conducted for the first time by Hungarian anthropologist Yanosh Yanko at the end of the XIX century. After him the Russian expedition of Tobolsk Province Museum took place there under the direction of L. Schulz and B. Gorodkov in 1911. Ural archaeologist K. Karacharov resumed the study of these monuments scale at Georgy Vizgalov’s suggestion in 1997-1998. This monument scale was realized. The works for revealing and systematization of Sorovskoy complex monuments have been continued by the colleague of “The Northern Archeology” since 1991. The children expedition has started working since 2002. This expedition is for a good long while.
The territory is protected by the Russian Federation law. It means that all investments in this land and in this project will never be lost and will give more social and, if it is necessary, commercial effect. This territory will have no other way.
Let’s imagine that the archaeological park with the open-air museum will be opened here. Its visitors will be able to see the whole history of this territory colonization by a man – since Stone Age when a man begins more or less settled life till the middle of the XX century when Salym Khanty settled down there. One culture replaced the other one in the permanent cycle in these places. As they say, nature abhors a vacuum. If a nation died out or went away, others came there right away, built their houses and began to live.
We have the possibilities for reconstruction and reproduction of these cultures with the purpose of tourist display. There are real archaeological monuments; the Russian farmery is not far from here; and at the near lake the Khanty family lives. The participation in the project for them is both communication and regular work, daily bread, as they say.
2. Camp arrangement
The residential area arrangement of the expedition’s centre was begun with the undergrowth clearing at the territory of the camp sanitary zone and at the lakeside, placing of the decks made of boards under tents, firewood storing up. The expedition participants built together the cozy canteen having become a communicational and geographical centre of the camp, kitchen buildings, a washing zone; pathways were formed. The well was dug out and arranged for supplying with water. The bread stove permitting to provide the camp with bread was built with the help of the Khanty family within the pilot program. Even the bath complex has been arranged recently; mobile bathes were given by Salym Petroleum Development Company. The awning was erected at the pilot area. Schoolchildren are engaged in the station arranging as well as in archaeological works and lections – for four hours a day.
3. Studies
Children of school age work in the expedition under the direction of archeologists and scientists-researchers. The course begins with teaching recognition of archaeological objects on the site, “reading” of the history monuments: determination of dwelling complex places and defensive installations by eye. At the same time they get skills in terrain orientation, primary knowledge of geodesy (digging a prospect-hole, knack for using of geodesic and measuring instruments, determination and sketching of stratigraphical levels, eye survey plans, etc). They together with scientists select natural patterns for natural-science analysis with the purpose of the paleoenvironment reconstruction of antiquities and dating of archaeological objects.
Teaching traps making for animals and fish, modeling and baking of ceramics, making and using of instruments’ replicas used in pottery, metallurgy, housebuilding, etc is included in the course.
The young participants of the expedition get firm ideas about the society of ancient people in the personal labour process, besides, naturally learning such true things as respectful attitude to natural environment, history of the region where they live in and through this local history – to the history of mankind. Making the future open-air museum by their own hands they get the possibility to join to the local culture, to connect with it, obtain the homeland, the new homeland. Not the homeland of their parents but the homeland where they were born and grew up.
The gained experience exerts influence upon them more convincingly than knowledge derived from books. And besides they begin to read books with far more pleasure just now feeling earlier unknown for them need for permanent discoveries.
The expedition can become all-the-year-round if the project develops. And then not only 150 children but also adults will be able to take part in it. One can open the so-called service for schools, giving short-time courses for teachers, students and all interested people. One can organize family pastime, corporative weak-ends, etc.
4. Stove. Boat
Traditional local manufactures are also included in the educational program. They are making of oblases (boats) and bread stoves that are the elements of traditional Siberian Russian culture but are kept today only in everyday life of Khanty and Mansy excepted them some time. Oblas is a Russian word, from the word “oblo” – an unbroken hollow piece of wood. It is called “ryt” (a boat erected of the log) in Khanty language. We can judge from the archaeological sources that there were no tools for the oblas making – namely hand drills and adzes – in the traditional culture of northern aborigines till the end of the XVI century. That is why they could not produce them. The oblas is a product of Russian traditional culture brought to these lands since the beginning of the XVII century, since the Russian colonization of these lands, adapted and comprehended as one of the important technologies of life support by the local nation.
Other ancient technologies of life - from the crockery production to baking are also reconstructed during the expedition.
Bread became a part of aborigines’ culture only from Russian colonization. Such a bread stove is of Russian origin as well. The idea of the stove lower surface[2] was put in it. Aboriginal cultures of northern lands have never been agricultural. Neither the Khanty, nor the Mansy, nor the Nenets and the Selcups have never cultivated grain crops. You meet neither mills nor sickles among their ancient utensils. But now nobody sees Khanty culture without the bread stove. Such type of the stove for bread baking is an Indo-European phenomenon. Some facts are known that just like these bread stoves were built by emigrants from Northern Europe in Virginia in the New World, in the Russian European north in the XVII century. It is a paradox: this phenomenon is kept now in Khanty culture.
The expedition participants are learning to understand and value such facts and so the cultures neighboring with them.
The stove inside becomes red- hot by burning firewood in it; ashes are swept out and dough in moulds is put in it. Clay, which the stove is clayed by, gradually gives heat due to which bread is baked.
Thus, the participants of the expedition adopt the experience of the past generations and thereby become stronger.
Everybody knows the tract Barsova Gora[3] in Surgut region. There is no doubt it would give the best fit as a centre of such a project. But the most part of it is destroyed in respect to a historical and cultural and recreational value as a result of consistent building and road works and innumerable research and wild excavations. You will meet the combination of the monument purity that we see at Sorovskie Lakes and expressiveness, tourist attractiveness nowhere else.
The impressive monuments accumulation of historical and cultural heritage and small antropogenic deranged state of the territory, difficult access to many objects, rich flora and fauna and interesting relief relate to key objects that provide the basis for tourism development on Sorovskie Lakes. This natural zone offers a great number of ecologically clean and picturesque forestlands where one can organize hunters’ basic camp equipped with up-to-date equipment and outfit, picnic zones, ecological paths, etc.
We thought over the transportation scheme of tourists and participants of the expedition to the place by a helicopter and a launch. In winter movement is possible by snowmobiles; those who wish can use a reindeer team the sledge of which is covered with reindeer-fell. All these facts create prerequisites for development of varied forms of research, ecological and sport tourism.
If to tell about the scale increase of the expedition and the project as a whole to regional then it is a question, first of all, not of the expedition participants’ number increase at a time (15-25 persons in a shift work there) but of its enhancement in order to bring the period of its activity to all-the-year-round. One can tell about building of winter objects, additional purchase of winter expeditionary outfit, mini-heaters, etc. The work content allows supplying with the varied program in any season. If in summer the more emphasis is laid on the territory cleaning and preparing of the objects of history and culture heritage for excursion work then in winter they will reproduce all kinds of human vital activities in these conditions: hunting, fishing, skin currying, making of tackle and traps, etc. Children will be taught to make forest skis and to ski, to discern traces and perceive mores of forest animals, etc. And it is no need to mention all-the-year-round courses for local ancient history. One can reconstruct winter sites of ancient settlement that can be made suitable for living there in winter. And thus, one can make conditions for the center of the experimental archaeology. In the famous book of Polish researchers Renata Malinova and Jaroslav Malina “Jump in the Past” they describe the experience of the present European centers where curious enthusiasts mastering the ancient technologies of vital activities live together with researchers. The programs of our expedition can be packed in the same way – if there would be a political volition, order and financing.
The idea can be transformed also for organization of corporative and family vacation in nature in winter. I will not discover America if I say that it is a relevant problem for people of the region not invested with power and superfluous income. In the okrug there are almost no country rest homes, recreation centers where one could rest in a temporary isolation from the industrial world. Wellness Hotel “Yugorskaya Dolina” or pheasant hunt in Dobrino are directed toward top-managers and businessmen. And Sorovskie Lakes could become the cherished place where you can be driven to by helicopter or snowmobile for two-three days, where the house, electric power station, petrol for a snowmobile, a bath, fireplace, skis and, perhaps, some magazines will be prepared for you. You will have a chance not to answer problem calls for three days, to walk around the forest, to fish to your heart’s content and to spend good time with your family.
It is possible to create the union for producing souvenirs and unique articles made to order in the centre of the tourist complex. These objects’ peculiarity, their indissoluble connection with the history of the nation, with its labour and way of life will attract great interest to the given production and, that is of no small importance, guarantee for a deserved kind of earnings to masters. With relation to the preservation of cultural heritage the made conditions for skills transmission for varied natural material processing across the generations will not let trade technologies sink into the past.
All these ideas have good chance to be essential and can develop within our project directed, I repeat, first of all, toward children but not closed from adults. But unfortunately, now the project resembles a thoroughbred puppy that looks for its master. The scientific production association “The Northern Archeology” has the possibilities of the expedition sustenance in its current scale; for the project development in all its potential the interested partners in power and business are necessary.
It can be supported by any administrative structure during solving of its problems – educational and pedagogical or recreational and tourist and cognitive... Any big organization can take this project under its constant tutelage or at the minimum pay for the session for their children in such expedition it its existing today state. Using budgetary funds in that way it is possible to solve by no means only problem of teen-agers’ leisure organization. Providing with real cultural interaction in the atmosphere of team-labour and game when ethnic antagonisms are obliterated in the consciousness of the young people seems to me to be important in our work. And not only media-environment lays them. Children contraposition on the ethnic basis, the relative division of people into aboriginal and non-aboriginal has been laid already at the level of territorial governing – both in Khanty-Mansyisk Okrug and Yamalo-Nenetsky Okrug!
Judge yourself: our Departments for Northern Nations’ Affairs plan health-improving summer activities for children of Northern nations and Departments of Education and Youth Policy – for all the rest children. Is there any need to continue?
Luckily, not indifferent people always can be found, especially when the cause concerns work with children – it is not vodka trade, after all. The head of the heliport “Salym” of Nefteyugansk squadron N. Maksimov appointed himself a permanent foreman of our expedition from the first age of its life. Our centre is in off-season and the equipment is kept under his tending. Thanks to him and the help of CS-6 (a compressor station) Surgutgazprom ltd. (the head is A. Zagidullin) we have the possibility to drop off people to the expedition location, to deliver building materials and provisions – by air in summer and by snowmobile in winter.
And the project of SHELL Corporation in Russia, the oil company Salym Petroleum Development, developing social programs in Salym settlement has already helped us for two years. Our project corresponds to their ideas of the social mission of the industrial corporation in the developing territory. Speaking Russian we can express it by our saying: “If you want to help a hungry man – don’t give him fish but give him a fishing-rod”. The managers of the Dutch oil company understand two crucial theses not obvious for many Russian officials. The first one lies in the fact that the project is connected with the development of history and culture heritage of the territory that makes it an immutable value. The second thesis is connected with new forms priority of the employment of the residential population and children, first of all, - by way of self-preservation. Teenagers from Salym see foreign cars going by every day but this other’s beautiful life flashes by. But they want something as well, that is why they go to rob because there is no thought and idea in the native settlement. Robbery at the road is growing because of boredom and inoccupation. It is an important problem for the settlements of the okrug along the so-called oil pipe. At the same time in our project these grown-up children show their worth differently, leaving town-children in the dust – they work better, they are more interested, they are quick-witted. Because they begin to feel care, real human and not bureaucratic interest in them and their future. They begin to look differently at the world that is why it is necessary to work with them. Otherwise it will be that contingent who will go to “bomb” rich oil cities that has already been happening in Surgut.
I am far from the interpretation of our project as a panacea of all social problems but it is one of real and true ways of programming of our peace and accomplishing of perspective cultural task.
[1] The Outside – the central regions of Russia (the translator’s note here and then)
[2] The place where products are processed by heating, burning and furnacing.
[3] The name of the hill (translator’s note)
