The excavation of cemeteries and settlements is the most important part of the field research procedure in archeology. Intelligence provides information of different levels, which can then be repeatedly verified and supplemented. The procedure for laboratory studies is also repeatable and depends on the improvement of the methods used. The excavations are unique.
No matter how carefully and skillfully the excavations of the monument are carried out, it is nevertheless destroyed. After excavations, it ceases to exist in whole or in part as a monument of archeology, it becomes the sum of the obtained scientific materials and information. Therefore, only specialists with appropriate training and permission to excavate (open sheet) should excavate monuments.
The organization conducting the excavation and the head of the excavation should take care of the participation of the necessary specialists in the expedition. The excavations are led by an archaeologist. The detachment should include laboratory assistants, a qualified photographer, a draftsman, a restorer, an anthropologist and other specialists, depending on the tasks of the expeditionary research.
The main objectives of the study of cemeteries
The study of ancient graves in world and domestic science has a long history. Their excavations provided science with colossal archaeological, anthropological and other material. However, the peculiarity of this type of monuments lies in the fact that only those items that were required by the burial rite were laid with the buried. Therefore, when distinguishing an archaeological culture, one cannot rely only on data obtained from graves, as was done before. However, it is wrong to build generalizing conclusions about the archaeological culture only on the materials of some settlements. The materials of these monuments must be subjected to a general analysis. Only this makes it possible to achieve the necessary completeness of data for the reconstruction of the archaeological culture.
An ancient grave should be considered as a complex, not limited to material material. Everything is important: its device, the burial ceremony, the arrangement of things and their set.
The study of burial complexes should include the study of the structure of the grave structure, the place of burial, obtaining information about the burial process, the rite and actions with the buried, about the accompanying inventory, its placement.
When starting excavations, it is necessary to take into account what type of burial structure will be explored. Depending on this, appropriate research methods should be chosen.
Burial site equipment . The most common structures are grave pits dug in the ground (in the mainland), different in shape: quadrangular, oval, without additional structures or with a frame, walls made of logs or stone, with a lining, covered with wood or stone. Complex burial chambers, known, for example, among the Scythians, Saks, in the Altai Mountains, can be singled out as a special group. They were arranged in the form of an extensive wooden frame with additional rooms for inventory, burial of horses. Such cells had a specially equipped corridor entrance.
At the same time, other burial devices are also known: funeral urns, ossuaries - special vessels made of ceramics or stone, in which the remains of the deceased were put. The urns were kept in clay or brick vaults.
Archaeologists often have to deal with the organization of the burial place on the surface of the soil buried under the mound or in the mound. The burial place in this case can be equipped with a wooden frame, lined with stone slabs or turf. Sod structures can be particularly difficult to spot.
Rice. 87.
1 - a crouched burial of the Bronze Age in a grave pit with a wooden covering; 2 - burial in a specially made catacomb
To a later time, as a rule, to the period of the formation of early states, there are burials in sarcophagi made of wood, stone, terracotta, in coffins. Simple and complex, decorated, they also had a social function, as, indeed, the entire structure of the above-ground burial structure. When exploring them, one must keep in mind that these architectural and archaeological monuments, having their own traditional structure, reflected the worldview of the people who created them, associated with ideas about life, death, and the structure of the universe. Such, for example, are the royal barrows of the Scythians, the Issyk barrow of the Saks, the barrows in the Pazyryk and Ukok valleys in Gorny Altai, the Arzhan barrow in Tuva, and others.
In archeology, there are several burial methods which are easily established during excavations. It is more difficult to establish what actions were performed with the deceased: trepanation of the skull, extraction of the insides, dismemberment, etc. An archaeologist in the course of archaeological excavations should, at the opportunity, trace what actions were carried out before the burial.
Simple burial - placing the body of the deceased in the ground or coffin, deck. In archeology, many varieties of corpse position are recorded: elongated; crouched on its side, in which the knees of the deceased are bent; on the back with different positions of the arms and legs. During the excavations of the burials, the skeleton of the buried or its remains are found. At the same time, it should be taken into account that the bones of the arms, legs, and skull could change their original position during the decomposition of muscle tissue, during the compaction of the earth filling the grave pit. For example, if the buried person was laid on his back, and his legs were bent up with his knees, then this position cannot be preserved over time; during excavations, the archaeologist will find the bones of the legs of the buried with knees bent and lying to the right or left, and maybe to the sides, in the “dance” position. The same changes occur with the location of the skull. When an archaeologist writes in a diary that the buried person was laid on his back with his head turned to the right or left, it can almost always be said that his statement is wrong, since the skull unfolds under the weight of the earth that filled the grave pit.
Rice. 88.
1 - single in a soil pit; 2 - in the lining; 3 - in a stone box; 4 - in a log house; 5, 6 - in the burial chamber
A place where a large number of people are buried simultaneously or consecutively over a long period is called a group burial. This type of burial, for example, is known in Siberia in the Tagar culture of the early Iron Age.
Secondary burial is the reburial of bones after the muscle tissue has rotted away. Often these bones were laid out in a grave pit, crypt or urn after they had been in another place for some time, were buried or lay on the surface of the earth.
The main purpose of embalming the deceased is to preserve the body of the deceased, for which the skull was trepanned, the internal organs were removed and replaced with embalming substances. After that, the deceased was buried. In Russia, such embalmed corpses of the buried were found in the Altai Mountains and belong to the Pazyryk culture.
The rite of cremation (burning of a corpse) in antiquity was quite widely known. There are quite a few varieties of it. Three of them can be distinguished as the main ones: the burning of a corpse on special burial grounds inside the grave pit or burial crypt, the burning of the dead together with the burial chamber, and the burial of heaps of ashes or burnt bones in urns and special bags in the grave. The burning itself in this case was carried out somewhere on the side, outside the burial place. In a number of archaeological cultures, the rite of burning was combined with the rite of preserving the appearance of the deceased by making clay and terracotta masks, sculptural heads of the buried (Tesinsky and Tashtyk cultures of the Hunno-Sarmatian era of the early Iron Age).
Rice. 89. "Group" burial of the Tagar culture of the early Iron Age
On July 8, archaeological excavations began at the former site of the Volgakabel plant. These are the first scientific studies of the All Saints Cemetery in more than eight decades that have passed since the moment when the largest pre-revolutionary urban necropolis began to be continuously barbarously destroyed. For the first time, the remains of the Samarans, who died about a century ago and were buried at Vsesvyatsky, will be reburied, and not mixed with mountains of construction debris. As it was done in previous decades under different political regimes and rulers.
Combining the plan of engineer Zimin in 1996 with Google Maps from camapka.ru shows that the territory of the Volgacable, where archaeologists now work, occupies the oldest part of the necropolis, designated as the "Old Orthodox Cemetery".
The area where the excavation is now clogged is a heavily disturbed, but surviving part of the Old Cemetery, which has been continuously destroyed since the 1930s. It should be noted that during the construction work on the construction of the Gudok shopping center on the territory of the former factory, which was interrupted for archaeological research, the surviving part of the cemetery was practically not damaged.
This is the only headstone found so far. The stone lay in a layer of construction debris, so it is impossible to establish its relation to that other grave.
It is possible that the bones of the Chizhovs will never be found again.
By the way, the black marble monument was ordered in Moscow.
Most likely, as a result of excavations, no one can be personally identified. Thanks to the developers of the 1930s.
In 1930, the City Council issued a decree "On the sale of monuments, crosses, bars and tombstones and signs within the city limits." Its result was the almost complete disappearance of identifying signs of the graves of the All Saints cemetery. Marauders for several years plundered tombstones and fences, turning the territory of the necropolis into a giant wasteland, and making the graves nameless. It was from this moment that the burial places of the mothers of Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy and Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin, the famous philanthropist and local historian Konstantin Pavlovich Golovkin and the great historian Academician Sergei Fyodorovich Platonov can be considered irretrievably lost.
After that, even that small section of the Old Orthodox Cemetery, which survived after the construction of the plant's workshops, was significantly damaged.
In the 1950s, ceramic pipes were laid on the site, and the bones were thrown into a dump.
Collector, equipped directly in a brick crypt. Probably at the same time as laying pipes.
Well shaft, installed directly on the burial.
Archaeological research on the remaining sites began last Monday.
The Regional Ministry of Culture reports on the progress of work almost on a daily basis. But the volumes of even the surviving site are enormous. And archaeologists, apparently, will stay here for a long time.
Everything is done according to science. This is a scientific study of the necropolis, and not a simple reburial of the remains. Everything is fixed, sketched ...
The bone remains are analyzed by Doctor of Historical Sciences Alexander Alexandrovich Khokhlov.
The sex of the deceased, pathologies and diseases are determined.
Earthworks are carried out by people with considerable experience in archaeological research and students of Samara universities. 
Many graves were destroyed by construction work in the 1940s-1980s. Skeletons are not always found entirely. Sometimes, the bones are not in anatomical order.
Nevertheless, the clearing of the surviving site is carried out rather meticulously.
One of the few well-preserved untouched burials.
Vessels are often found in coffins at Vsesvyatsky.
According to one version, these are vessels from oil. According to tradition, the oil left over from the sacrament of unction was poured into the coffin of the deceased. It is possible that the vessel from this oil was placed there.
A tomb of strange origin that scientists will have to deal with in the future. Several still unstiffened corpses were randomly dumped into it.
And a little about the finds made last week...
The finds are stacked, processed, and then transferred to the museum collection.
Cross from the tomb of a priest. In addition, a decayed Psalter was found in it.
A cross made of semi-precious stone.
More common are pectoral crosses of a more familiar form to our contemporaries.
Cross and decayed icon.
The fabric in the burials decayed, but two woven black shawls were found.
Metal detail of decoration. Probably from a wreath.
Beyond the territory of the excavation one can see new buildings built on the territory of the same cemetery. Without any archaeological research. One can only guess about the fate of the remains of the Samarans located under them.
Incredible Facts
We tend to think that archaeologists are "dusty" experts who study people and their culture through artifacts and human remains.
But sometimes they are more like ancient storytellers who, with the help of found antiquities tell interesting stories that magically transport us to distant times and places.
In the stories below, we will be transported to the ancient worlds of long-forgotten children. Some stories are touching, others are simply mysterious, and some are terrifying.
10 Oriens Revival
In October 2013, in one of the fields in Leicestershire, England, a treasure hunter using a metal detector discovered meter coffin of a Roman child. To avoid referring to the child in the third person, the scientific community decided to call him "Oriens", which means "to rise" (like the Sun).
Oriens is believed to have been buried in the 3rd or 4th century. It is not known for certain how old the child was, but the bracelets on her arms suggest that it was a girl.
Bracelets with girl's hands
Bracelet clasp
Oriens must have lived in a wealthy family or her relatives had a high social status, because she was found in a lead coffin, which was a rarity at that time, especially in matters of children's burials.
coffin inside
Most of the children then interred, dressed in a shroud (clothing for the deceased). Only a few fragments of bones remained from the baby. However, archaeologists have been able to piece together some of the details of her life, including information about the society in which she lived.
They learned a lot by analyzing some of the resins found in her coffin.
Milk teeth of Oriens
Based on the stories of Stuart Palmer (Stuart Palmer) from the team of archaeologists of Warwickshire ( Archeology Warwickshire), presence frankincense, olive oil, and pistachio nut oil in the soil, found in a coffin suggests that Orienza can be attributed to a very small number of Roman burials of people with the highest status.
The girl was buried according to very expensive Mediterranean and Middle Eastern customs.
"Nails" that held the internal components of the coffin
Resins masked the smell of a decaying body during afterlife rituals, which, according to the ancients, facilitated the transition to the afterlife. From a social standpoint, this suggests that the inhabitants of Roman Britain continued to follow continental burial rites, so they must have imported oils and resins from the Middle East.
9. Secrets of a baby singer
Almost 3,000 years ago, seven-year-old Tjayasetimu sang in the choir in the temple of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. Despite the fact that the girl took most of the secrets with her to the grave, the curators of the British Museum, where her mummy was exhibited in 2014, managed to find out some details about the child.
It is not known for certain where she lived and worked, because the British Museum bought the mummy from a dealer back in 1888. However, Tjayasetimu's body is incredibly well preserved. In the 1970s, as part of a restoration project, hieroglyphs and drawings under oil-blackened bandages on the body.
Tools that Tjayasetimu may have used
Thanks to the inscriptions, it was possible to find out her name and position. The name Tjayasetimu, which means "the goddess Isis will conquer them", protects from evil spirits. Her work as a singer in the temple was considered very important to the god Amun.
The reason for the girl receiving such a “position” is also unknown: her voice or family ties. It is only known that she was an important person, because the body was mummified with a golden mask on her face.
The scan showed the baby teeth of the girl
In 2013, a CT scan showed that her body, including her face and hair, was still well preserved. Due to the absence of signs of long-term illness and injury, she is believed to have died of a short-term illness such as cholera.
8 The Sewer Babies Mystery
In the Roman Empire, infanticide was widely practiced to limit the size of the family, because reliable methods of birth control did not exist. This helped save scarce resources and improve the lives of other family members.
Children under the age of 6 months were generally not treated as human beings in Roman society.
Burial was found in this well
However, even knowing this fact, the researchers were still horrified when in 1988 in Ashkelon, on the southern coast of Israel, they made a terrible discovery. Archaeologists have discovered a mass grave of almost 100 children in an ancient sewer under the Roman baths.
Church ruins in Ashkelon
Most of the bones found were intact, and, according to scientists, the children were thrown into the sewers immediately after death. Given the general age of the children and the absence of signs of disease, the cause of death was almost certainly infanticide.
According to these bones, experts determined that the dead were babies.
Although the Romans had more preference for male children, researchers have been unable to find evidence that they intentionally killed more female babies. They failed to find confirmation of this in the study of this find.
Some experts note that the bathhouse above the sewer also worked as a brothel. They suggest that the babies were unwanted children of the women of the oldest profession who worked there.
Some female infants may have been spared their lives to later become courtesans. Despite the fact that both women and men were engaged in the ancient profession in the Roman Empire, the former were still more in demand.
ancient archaeological site
7. An unusual child of metalworkers
About 4,000 years ago in prehistoric Britain, children were tasked with decorating jewelry and weapons with gold threads as thin as a human hair. On some specimens, more than 1000 such threads were located on one square centimeter of wood.
Scientists discovered this after an ornate wooden dagger handle was found in the Bush Mound area near Stonehenge in the 1800s.
Daggers found at the same time in Bush. Salisbury Plain. Discovered in the richest and most important Bronze Age grave ever found in Britain
The work is so precious that it is difficult to see all the details with the naked eye. After conducting research, the experts came to the conclusion that, most likely, teenagers and children under the age of 10 were the authors of such extreme craftsmanship on the dagger handle.
Without a magnifying glass, an ordinary adult would not be able to do this, because his vision is not sharp enough. After the age of 21, a person's vision gradually begins to deteriorate.
Although the children used simple tools, they had a special understanding of design and geometry. However, they paid a high price for beautiful handiwork. Their eyesight was rapidly deteriorating, myopathy overtook them at the age of 15, and by the age of 20 they were already partially blind.
This made them unfit for other work, so they had to rely on their communities.
6. Very good parents
Believing that the attitude of some scientists towards Neanderthals was not entirely objective, archaeologists from the University of York decided to rewrite the history of these prehistoric people. Until recently, it was believed that Neanderthal children lived dangerous, difficult, and short lives.
However, the team of the above archaeologists came to different conclusions after studying the social and cultural factors of the life of the first people from finds from different times in different places throughout Europe.
"Opinions about Neanderthals are changing," says Penny Spikins, lead researcher. “Partly due to the fact that they mated with us, and this already speaks of our similarity. But no less important were the latest findings. There is a fundamental difference between a harsh childhood and a childhood spent in harsh conditions."
A Neanderthal child examines his reflection in the water. Neanderthal Museum in Kropina, Croatia
Spikins believes that Neanderthal children were very attached to their families, and families were close-knit. He also notes that children were taught how to handle tools. At two locations in two different countries, a team of archaeologists found stones that were well-cut compared to others that were chipped.
They looked like children were being taught by adults how to make tools.
Although there is no conclusive evidence for this claim, Spikins believes that prehistoric children "played peek-a-boo" in imitation of adults, because the same "game" was played by humans and great apes.
When studying the burials of Neanderthal babies and children, Spikins came to the conclusion that parents buried their offspring with great care, since the remains of children, rather than adults, that have survived to this day, were more often found.
The team of archaeologists also emphasizes that there is evidence to support the fact that parents have been caring for their sick or injured children for several years.
The oldest finds of archaeologists
5. Battle Scouts of Ancient Egypt
To learn about how children lived in the city of Oxyrhynchus of Ancient Egypt, historians examined about 7,500 documents allegedly from the sixth century. More than 25,000 people lived in the city, and he himself was considered the Roman administrative center of his area, in which the weaving industry of Egypt flourished.
More than a century ago, artifacts from the time of the existence of Oxyrhynchus were found, after analyzing which historians came to the conclusion that a youth group of boy scouts, known as the "gymnasium", was actively working in ancient Egypt, where young people were trained to become good citizens.
Boys on a camel. Mosaic from Late Antiquity, early 6th century.
Great Palace Mosaic Museum in Istanbul, Türkiye.
Boys born in free Egyptian, Greek and Roman families were accepted for training. Despite the "wealthy" demographics, gymnasium membership was limited to 10-25 percent of the city's families.
For the boys who left applications for studying at the gymnasium, it was a transition to adulthood. They became full-fledged adults when they got married in their early twenties. Girls who married as teenagers prepared for their role by working in their parents' homes.
Boys from free families who did not get into the gymnasium began to work, as children, under a contract for several years. Many contracts were for work in weaving.
Roman boy with Egyptian hairstyle. A side strand of hair is cut off and donated to the gods before the upcoming coming-of-age ceremony. First half of the second century AD. Museum of Cultural History, Oslo.
Historians have discovered one student contract with a girl. But as it turned out, her case was unique, because she was an orphan and had to pay off the debts of her late father.
Slave children could enter into the same work contracts as boys born into free families. But unlike the latter, who lived with their families, the children of slaves could be sold. In this case, they lived with their owners. The discovered documents showed that some children of slaves were sold as early as the age of two years.
4. The riddle of the "moose" geoglyph
In this story, our discovery of the past is driven by curiosity about what will happen in the future. Images taken from space in 2011 revealed the existence of a giant elk geoglyph (a geometric pattern applied to the ground) in the Ural Mountains, which is believed to predate the millennia-old known Nazca geoglyphs found in Peru.
The type of masonry known as "stone chipping" suggests that this structure may have been built around 3000-4000 BC. BC.
Geoglyphs of Nazca
The structure is about 275 meters long with two horns, four legs and a long snout facing north. In prehistoric times, the geoglyph could be seen from a nearby ridge. He looked like a shiny white figure against the background of green grass. Today this place is covered with soil.
Archaeologists were amazed at the thoughtfulness of the design. "Moose hooves were made from small crushed stones and clay," explains Stanislav Grigoriev, a specialist at the Russian Academy of Sciences. "The walls were very low, I believe, and the passages between them very narrow. The situation was also in the muzzle area: rubble and clay, four small wide walls and three passages."
"Moose" geoglyph
The researchers also found evidence of two sites where fires were lit only once. They believe that these places were used for important rituals.
However, many questions remain unanswered, especially such as: who built this geoglyph and why. There is no archaeological evidence that the culture during that period was so advanced that people could build such a structure in this region.
But experts believe the most interesting discovery concerns children. They managed to find more than 150 instruments on site, 2-17 centimeters long. They believe that these instruments belonged to children who worked side by side with adults in a community project.
That is, it was not slave labor, but joint efforts in the name of achieving an important goal.
Archeology: finds
3. Children of the clouds
In July 2013, in the high-altitude area of the Amazonas region in Peru, archaeologists discovered 35 sarcophagi, each of which was no more than 70 centimeters long. The small coffins led researchers to believe that they belonged to the children of the mysterious Chachapoya culture, also known as "cloud warriors" because they lived in the rainforests of the mountains.
Between the 9th century and 1475, when their territories were conquered by the Incas, the Chachapoyas established villages and farms on steep mountain slopes, raised pigs and llamas there, and fought among themselves.
Their culture was eventually destroyed by diseases such as smallpox that European explorers brought with them.
Very little is known about Chachapoya and their children because they left no written language behind. However, according to Spanish documents from the 1500s, they were fierce warriors.
Pedro Cieza de Leon, who chronicled the history of Peru, described their appearance as follows: " They are the whitest and most beautiful of all the people that I have seen in India, and their wives are so beautiful that because of their softness, many of them deserve to be the wives of the Incas and live in the temple of the Sun.
But these cloud warriors did leave something behind: mummified bodies in unusual and strange sarcophagi that were found on high ledges overlooking the valley. Clay coffins were arranged vertically and were very similar in decoration to people: tunics, jewelry and even trophy skulls.
But no one knows why children were buried in their own cemetery separately from adults. It is also not clear why all the small sarcophagi "looked" to the west, while the adult coffins were located differently.
Mysterious archaeological finds
2. Gifts to the lake gods
Ancient villages of the Bronze Age spread their expanses around the alpine lakes of Germany and Switzerland. When some of the villages were discovered during excavations in the 1970s and 1980s, the archaeologists couldn't be happier because they found more than 160 houses aged 2600 - 3800 years.
These were houses along the coastal strip of the lake, which were flooded. To protect themselves from rising water levels, residents often moved to less dangerous areas, closer to land. When conditions improved, they returned again.
Strange things often happen in excavations. For example, the dreams of archaeologists there are often prophetic. So, there is a legend that the famous German businessman and amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who found ancient Troy, on the night of May 31 (the day before the golden treasure was found) was a bearded king (apparently, the ruler of Troy - Priam), who explained exactly where the royal treasury was hidden.
Gaston Maspero, who unearthed many tombs in the Valley of the Kings in the 19th century, admitted that he made many of his finds under the guidance of dreams. Found Neolithic settlement of the VIII millennium BC in Catal-Guyuk (Turkey), archaeologists dreamed of people with ocher-painted faces, and also about the bulls that these people worshiped.
One old archaeologist told the author of these lines that he almost always dreamed about the people who were buried there during the excavations of ancient graves. Often they showed him the objects of their work and life, which after some time were found in the graves.
Dreams not only suggest, but also warn. A memorable incident occurred in Egypt with the same Maspero, who was ordered by a priest who appeared in a dream to stop work. The scientist did not heed the warning, and in the following days several of his employees were bitten by poisonous snakes. As a result, four died.
A similar warning dream was seen on the same night by two archaeologists during excavations in the Urals in the late 1970s. And in the morning a tragedy occurred: the embankment, under which work was carried out, collapsed, immediately burying the whole brigade.
Prophetic dreams are not the only oddity that happens in the process of archaeological research. It happens that archaeologists see, especially at dusk, some ghostly figures and lights. They also talk about unusual sounds, most often the sounds of steps - without the presence of the one who makes these steps. For example, in the 1950s in Mongolia, archaeologists worked until late in the evening in a dug hole and more than once heard someone huge walking upstairs. The ground crunched as if a creature the weight of an elephant was strolling around the pit. However, when people climbed up, the sounds stopped. And there was no one around. The strange walker had nowhere to hide - a completely open area stretched around, visible for many kilometers. But the steps were heard by all the members of the expedition! Some deliberately remained in the pit until dark, in order to once again confirm the presence of a phenomenon, an explanation for which was never found.
In addition to footsteps, “mumbling voices” are often heard in the excavations of ancient cemeteries. This phenomenon has been known since antiquity. Most often it occurs in deep gorges, deaf thickets, caves. Places where voices sounded were known as shrines in the era of antiquity, and if words could be made out in indistinct muttering, then they were perceived as prophecies. This is how the famous Delphic Oracle appeared in Greece. Among the ancient Slavs, mumbling voices foreshadowed someone's imminent death and indicated the presence of evil spirits.
There is a known case (occurred in Ukraine) when a similar voice sounded after opening one of the burials, it did not subside until the grave was buried again. During excavations in the Volga region, strange voices heard at dawn, uttered individual words in an incomprehensible language. Later it turned out that these words are from the language of the ancient Bulgars, who once lived here.
There are stories among archaeologists about mysterious “invisibles”. One such incident, confirmed by several dozen witnesses, happened at the excavations of a pagan temple in the Novgorod region. In clear, calm weather, some strange local wind began to rush between people, like a tornado, and moving in different directions. However, no noise was heard.
- there was only a rustle, by which the vector of air movement was determined. It was as if some large invisible creature was rushing back and forth among the members of the expedition.
During the excavation of an ancient temple in Altai, such air gusts were so strong that they looked like a soundless shock wave. They overturned people and heavy objects taken by archaeologists from the graves.
Fear and amnesia
During excavations, the psyche of people often suffers. In the 1970s, a group of archaeologists who were excavating ancient Alanian burial grounds in the North Caucasus were suddenly and completely unreasonably seized with such horror that they abandoned everything. climbed the trees and sat there until the morning. With the dawn, the feeling of anxiety decreased, but the work still soon had to be curtailed due to the deteriorating mental state of the expedition members.
Something similar happened in the Arkhangelsk region, when amateur archaeologists began to clear the ancient labyrinth. They were attacked by fear, multiplied by persecution mania. People who had known each other for many years suddenly began to suspect their comrades of malicious intent. By evening, the fear intensified to the point that the expedition members went away from the sinister place, as if someone had driven them from there.
Moments of short-term memory loss, or, as it is called in medicine, retrograde amnesia, can also be attributed to anomalous incidents at excavations. During the conversation, the man suddenly fell silent and began to look around in bewilderment. When questioned, it turned out that he did not remember anything that had happened to him in the last five to thirty minutes (sometimes several hours). Usually something like this happens with a concussion. But here the person had no injuries, he did not fall and did not hit. According to some reports, sudden causeless amnesia often occurred among workers who excavated in the Egyptian Valley of the Kings.
Hut or grave?
Any archaeologist will tell you dozens of similar stories, especially in the evening by the fire, after field work. Some bikes can be downright fantastic. For example, two diggers found an old cemetery in the forest and, hoping to profit from something valuable, began to open the graves. By evening, friends were about to leave, when suddenly the air around them swirled and the sky brightened. Looking around, they were amazed. The edge of the forest, on which they found themselves, was completely unfamiliar to them. Besides, it was daytime, not evening. An old-fashionedly dressed young woman with beads on her chest came out of the hut, which turned out to be nearby, and, smiling, called the diggers into the house. They accepted the invitation. The hostess put food on the table and talked to the guests. Asking her about the nearest settlements, her friends soon became convinced that she did not even know such names. One of the guests, anticipating something bad, decided to go look for a way. But as soon as he left the house, something happened to the air again, and the digger found himself in the same old cemetery. His friend, who remained in the hut, was nowhere to be seen, just as the dwelling and its mistress were not visible. But nearby there were muffled groans, as if coming from under the ground. The digger looked. The ground on one of the graves that had not yet been excavated stirred. It looked like someone was trying to get out of it. Recognizing the voice, the unlucky "archaeologist" began to feverishly dig and soon found his friend. He did not know how he ended up in a grave and almost suffocated in it. In the same grave lay an ancient desiccated corpse. In the meager evening light, the friends examined the beads on the remains - exactly the same as those that were on the hostess of the hut!
Rescue archaeological excavations of the settlement of Petelino-1 spent the summer in the suburbs of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Archaeologists led by Alexei Viktorovich Alekseev unearthed one of the oldest settlements in the Moscow region. In the XIV century, the village of Dmitrieva Slobodka, which belonged to the great Moscow prince Dmitry Donskoy, was located here - the administrative and economic center of a large and rich volost. Dmitrieva Slobidka was repeatedly mentioned in the wills of the Moscow princes and the main state acts as an important point. The excavations also captured a part of the ancient medieval necropolis of the XIV-XVI centuries with a large number of burials. A large number of rare and interesting finds were found: white stone tombstones, a stone cross, pectoral crosses, silver coins, icons, applied printing, silver belt linings, a lot of ceramics of the 14th-16th centuries and more.
Photos are clickable, with geographic coordinates and binding to the Yandex map, 06-07.2016.
Historical reference, excavation scheme, the beginning of the rescue excavations of the Petelino-1 settlement, as well as a small educational program on archeology can be found here:
Excavations of Petelino-1, medieval necropolis, part 1
Excavations of the settlement of Petelino-1, video tour
1. All that has been preserved from a person is the strongest bones and a loose skull. Note how shallowly he was buried, only about 60 cm from the then ground level.
2. Another grave with preserved remains of a man and a coffin (beginning - photo 37,38 of the previous part). Later it turned out that this is the best preserved burial of all those found. The coffins then were anthropomorphic decks hollowed out of solid wood. 
3. Paperwork has not been canceled 
4. Medieval pectoral cross 
5. A good find - a silver coin of the Golden Horde, dirham of Khan Berdibek (758-760/1357-1359) 
6. Turnover of dirham Berdibek 
7. Pectoral cross and dirham 
8. Panorama of the excavations, graves are visible 
9. Already dug graves, medieval gravestones and grave spots (rectangles that stand out against the background of the mainland) 
11. Two opened graves are visible. First one half is removed, then the other 
13. Cleaning the burial from 2 photos. The work is done with a knife and a brush, probably the slowest and most tedious part of the excavation 
15. All extracted soil is sown through a sieve in search of artifacts 
16. After cleaning, the bones of the hands and phalanges of the fingers became visible (compare with photo 13) 
17. And this is a grave in a grave. A later burial is partly located on an earlier one. The human remains have dissolved, only the skull is partially preserved 
18. Here also one grave finds another. Traces of a decayed deck are visible, human remains have not been preserved 
19. Finally completely cleaned the remains from the grave from the 2nd photo. It took a couple of days to clean up. 
23. Traces of a group grave, we assumed a family burial there and had high hopes for the excavation of this grave 
24. Smoke break, on the right, the beginning of the excavation of the group grave from the previous photo 
25. Unfortunately, the hopes were justified, the human remains in this grave were not preserved. It was possible to find only a trace of the skull - a cavity in the ground in the shape of a skull (Pompeii immediately comes to mind). However, its location confirmed our conjecture about a group burial. 
26. All that remains of a man is a strip in the ground in the shape of a skull 
27. We began to dig further and found another cavity from the skull. And between them is a trace of another small burial. Most likely it was a family with a child 
28. And this is a burial with a preserved skull, presumably of a child. Small eye sockets with a large skull suggest an illness (rickets?). By the way, at the end of the excavations, all the bones were sent to anthropologists for analysis and research. 
29. Beginning of the clearing of the grave from photo 18, the remains of the skull and traces of the deck are visible 
30. During the excavations, many fragments of ceramics of the XIV-XVII centuries were found. At the same time, almost nothing was found in the grave itself (I explain why this happened in the video and the previous part) 
31. Burial with photos 18, 29 after clearing 
32. And this is the chief specialist in clearing graves. Not everyone is able to clean the bones with a knife, a needle and a brush for a long time - this is a rather laborious task that requires perseverance and patience 
33. Found ceramics, XIV-XV century 
34. The rim of a fragment of a medieval ceramic vessel 
36. Profile of the rim from the previous photo 
37. Pay attention to the wavy pattern, this is the XIV-XV century 
43. Medieval pottery 
44. Unusual find - a fragment of the Black Sea amphora of the XIV century (right) 
Fig. 46. The rims of ceramic vessels of the XIV-XV centuries, wavy lines are visible. 
48. During the excavations, reporters from the Russia-24 channel came to us to shoot a documentary film about archaeological excavations. Expedition leader Alekseev A.V. gives them an interview. I'll post a link to the movie later. 
49. Photograph the most remarkable and valuable finds
