November 2023 saw the 175th anniversary of the birth of the outstanding Russian Orientalist, historian and archaeologist Nikolay Ivanovich Veselovsky (1848–1918). He was a man who made a considerable mark on Russian scholarship with his works on the history and archaeology of Central Asia, the Golden Horde and the Northern Black Sea region, writings on the history of Oriental studies and archaeology in this country.

On 25 September 2024, the exhibition Epochs, burial mounds, findings. Honouring the 175th anniversary of Nikolay Veselovsky will begin its run in the Halls of Central Asia on the ground floor of the Winter Palace (Halls 34–37). The display includes more than 200 unique exhibits that serve to characterize the sites and archaeological cultures that Veselovsky discovered – the Maikop and Scythian cultures, artefacts from the “Golden Cemetery”, the mediaeval Belorechensk burial ground and elsewhere. The items selected for display are the most significant from the excavations and purchases made by the scholar, who systematically acquired antiquities for the Imperial Archaeological Commission. The main emphasis is on presenting little known or entirely unknown objects. The display is supplemented by copies of documents from the Research Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for the History of Material Culture (including some previously unpublished) and pictorial reconstructions.

Veselovsky is associated with the discovery of such well-known archaeological sites as the Maikop (Oshad), Solokha, Novosvobodnaya, Kelermes and Razmennye (Kostromskaya) burial mounds. His digs initiated the archaeological study of the ancient cities of Central Asia: at the Afrasiab site Hellenistic art from the pre-Islamic period in Turkestan was unearthed. Veselovsky’s excavation of the Maikop Kurgan (Oshad) in 1897 became one of the most famous discoveries in archaeology. Those explorations launched the study of the Maikop culture and presented the Hermitage with an extremely rare collection of antiquities. Veselovsky was among the first to investigate Scythian sites in the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region. The famous stag from the 1st Razmenny (Kostromskaya) Kurgan that has become one of the symbols of the Hermitage was also among his finds.

Over the 29 years that he worked in the Imperial Archaeological Commission, Veselovsky constantly went off on expeditions, remaining in the field from May to September.

Thanks to Veselovsky’s selfless efforts in the archaeological exploration of sites in the south of Russia, unique finds from Kelermes, Oguz, Solokha, the Yelizavetinskaya and Ulyap barrows, the Golden Cemtery, Belorechensk and Moshchevaya Balka became part of the Hermitage collection. Each of the items has its own history, and the most astonishing have been specially chosen for the exhibition.

The exhibition curator is Tatiana Vladimirovna Ryabkova, senior researcher in the State Hermitage’s Department of the Archaeology of Eastern Europe and Siberia.

An illustrated scholarly catalogue of the exhibition is in preparation: Epokhi, kurgany, nakhodki. K 175-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia N. I. Veselovskogo (Saint Petersburg, State Hermitage Publishing House, 2024). The authors are researchers and specialists from the State Hermitage, the RAS Institute for the History of Material Culture and Saint Petersburg State University.