by Vadim PEREVOZCHIKOV, Cand. Sc. (Hist.), Director of the State Budgetary Institution of Culture of the Rostov Region Archeological Museum-Reserve "Tanais" As an object of cultural heritage the Archeological Museum-Reserve "Tanais" is one of the first archeological museum-reserves established in Russia. It lies on the ruins of the ancient city Tanais, in the extreme north-east of the ancient world (first half of the 3rd cent. B.C.-mid-5th cent. A.D.). Settlement of Tanais in the 1970s. Aerial photograph. View from the north. стр. 83 SOURCES AND ORIGIN OF FUTURE MUSEUM The city of Tanais was mentioned in the records of ancient authors (Plinius, Strabo). In 1823, in the course of the riding round the estuary area of the Don River, the famous Russian archeologist Ivan Stempkovsky attributed the site near the Nedvigovka settlement to this ancient city. As early as 1853, Pavel Leontyev, a prominent philologist, Professor of Greek literature at the Moscow University, Corresponding Member of the St. Petersburg AS, arranged the first large-scale archeological excavations there. The subsequent studies of this territory were carried out mainly in the territory of the settlement: in 1867 the excavations were headed by Vladimir Tiesengausen, a historian-orientalist, numismatist, Corresponding Member of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (speciality-Oriental literature), in 1870-by Pyotr Khitsunov, one of the first regional scientists, the author of a series of exciting articles on archeology, history, and nature of the Stavropol Territory. In 1908-1909 the outstanding historian-orientalist, researcher of history and archeology of Central Asia, Professor of the St. Petersburg University Nikolai Veselovsky studied a vast area occupied by a local necropolis. In the 1920s the site was studied by employees of the then largest North Caucasian archeological expedition on the Don. Annual excavations at the site were initiated in 1 ... Читать далее