The Textbook on the History of Science outside Science

Abstract

The article is a review of the textbook on the history of Russian archaeology prepared by A. S. Skripkin, professor of Volgograd State University, a well-known archaeologist specializing in the study of the Sarmatian tribes. The textbook was issued by the “Urait” publishing company in 2017. The first part, dominating in amount, is devoted to the history of the development of the Russian archaeology from the 18th century until the last quarter of the 20th century. The second part briefly outlines the topic well-known to the author — the history of archaeological research in the Lower Volga region in the same chronological period. However, the main problem of the reviewed publication is the author’s failure to use a considerable number of works published on this subject over the last 25 years. Almost all the information contained in the first section of the textbook was borrowed from the books by A. A. Formozov, G. S. Lebedev, V. F. Gening, A. D. Pryakhin published in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, in the years passed since then, a whole direction connected with the study of various aspects of its history has been formed in the Russian archaeology. A significant range of monographic publications, collections of articles and conference materials have been published; more than fifty candidate and doctoral dissertations have been defended. Unfortunately, all this remained beyond the scope of A. S. Skripkin. Therefore, there are numerous out-of-date ideas concerning various subjects connected with the formation and development of the Russian archaeology. Furthermore, the text contains a considerable number of factual errors, inaccuracies, misprints.