News

The IVth International Congress on the Archaeology of Eurasian Steppes “Nomadic Empires of Eurasia in the light of archaeological and interdisciplinary research” took place in Ulan‑Ude on September 16–21, 2019. The head of the Centre of Classical and Oriental Archaeology, IOCS HSE, Askold Ivantchik gave a paper at the opening session of the Congress on the subject “The King and Royal Power in the Scythian Ideas. Numismatics data”.

The conference “Archaeology of classical Bosporus and Pontus” dedicated to the 80th anniversary of Dmitry Borisovich Shelov was held in Rostov‑on‑Don, on October 28 — November 1, 2019. Head of the Centre of Classical and Oriental Archaeology Askold Ivantchik, Associate Professor Valentina Mordvintseva and students of the program “Classical and Oriental Archaeology” Alexey Devayev, Vladimir Lysenko and Pavel Nikulin presented there their lectures. The conference was very representative and brought together about a hundred experts on the archaeology of ancient Black Sea area from a dozen countries. It was held in a warm atmosphere thanks to the staff of the Tanais Archaeological Museum‑Reserve, the Southern Federal University and the Azov Museum of Local Lore, where meetings of scientific sections took place.

The volume ‘Advances in Ancient Black Sea Studies: Historiography, Archaeology and Religion’ reflects a tradition of fruitful collaboration between the Institute of Archaeology of Iaşi and many academic institutions from Romania and abroad. This volume is once again in line with their efforts to bridge the large gap between two scholarly traditions of the West with those of the East in order to integrate the constant flow of new information about the Black Sea region into western classical scholarship.

In 2019, for the first time, the Master’s Programme ‘Classical and Oriental Archaeology’ has successfully begun.

Askold Ivantchik, vice‑president of the International Union of Academies, participated in the meeting of the Union's standing committee (bureau) on June 7–10, 2019. It was held this time in the Tunisian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Académie tunisienne des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts Beït al‑Hikma) at the invitation of its President Prof. Abdelmadjid Charfi.

From the 1st to the 12th of May, 2019 an Archaeological School took place in the city of Agrigento on the Sicily, Italy. It was organized by the Centre of Classical and Oriental Archaeology, IOCS HSE (Prof. Dr.hab. Askold Ivantchik, Prof. Dr. Valentina Mordvintseva, Yuri Svoyski, Engineer). The School was conducted in the frame of an international archaeological expedition (University of Bordeaux-Montaigne, France and HSE, Russia, with the participation of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, USA).

On the 13^th of March, Valentina Mordvintseva, the associate professor at IOCS HSE, lecturer in the Master’s program “Classical and Oriental Archeology” gave a lecture on “Historical Sarmatians and the Sarmatian archaeological culture” at the Institute of History of the University of Rzeszow, Poland.

From the 12th of January until the 17th of February Liubov Eliseeva, a staff member at the Centre of Classical and Oriental Archaeology, was working with the database of epigraphic documents at King’s Digital Lab and Department of Classics (King’s College London) with the participation of Institute of Classical Studies.