Boris Alexejewitsch Kuftin

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Boris Alexeyevich Kuftin , Russian Борис Алексеевич Куфтин (*. 2. February 1892 in Samara ; † 2. August 1953 in Lielupe, today Jurmala ) was a Russian anthropologist and archaeologist , who are primarily researching the Neolithization Central Asia deserves made has . At the same time, although he did not address this topic until the age of 43, he is considered one of the founding fathers of Transcaucasian , Soviet archeology.

Life

Kuftin was born in Samara, Russia, in 1892; his father Alexei Nikanorowitsch Kuftin was an officer, his mother a teacher. He attended secondary school in Orenburg and then studied from 1910 at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Moscow University . But he was banned from the university for participating in a student movement. Kuftin then went to France, then Italy and Switzerland. Only on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov rule was he given an amnesty in 1913 and was able to return to Moscow. He initially became a botanist , but already specialized in anthropological , geographical and archaeological issues, in which he followed his teacher, the leading anthropologist Dmitri Nikolayevich Anuchin . Kuftin taught botany from 1913 to 1914. In 1919 he became a lecturer, teaching on early cultures, and at the same time he began his work at the University's Anthropological Institute. In 1923 he headed the Department of Ethnography after his teacher died. From 1924 to 1930 he worked at the central ethnological museum. In 1928 he became a professor. On September 27, 1930 he was arrested, his department dissolved and he himself banished. He expected further repression in Vologda . A member of Anuchin's research group, a Georgian student, found him a job in Tbilisi .

From 1933 to 1953 he worked in Tbilisi, Georgia. While teaching there, he discovered the Trialeti culture . In 1940 he named the northern edge of an overarching Bronze Age cultural region, which stretched from the Levant to the northeastern Caucasus , as " Kura-Araxes ", which he saw as the starting point for this extensive cultural unity in the southern Caucasus.

Kuftin, who became a member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences in 1946 , took part in the extensive archaeological expedition in southern Turkmenistan in the late 1940s and 1950s organized by the Turkmen Academy of Sciences from 1946. He mainly dug in copper and bronze age sites. He was married to the pianist Valentina Staschenka.

literature

  • С. С. Алымов, А. М. Решетов: Борис Алексеевич Куфтин: изломы жизненного пути , in: Репрессированные этнографые, 2nd ed., Moscow 2003, p.
  • Leo S. Klejn: Soviet Archeology. Trends, Schools, and History. Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 297–299 (Russian 1993, German under the title Lev S. Klejn: The Phenomenon of Soviet Archeology. History, Schools, Protagonists. Lang, 1997).

Works (selection)

  • Календарь и первобытная астрономия киргиз-казацкого народа. In: Этнографическое обозрение 3-4 (1916) (Calendar of the Kyrgyz and Cossacks).
  • Жилище крымских татар в связи с историей заселения полуострова (материалы и вопросы). 1925 (via Crimean Tatars).
  • Льяловская неолитическая культура на реке Клязьме в Московском уезде в её отношении к окскому неолиту Рязанской губернии и ранне -неолитическим культурам Северной Европы. In: Труды общества исследователей Рязанского края 5 (1925) (a first work on a Neolithic culture).
  • Археологические раскопки в Триалети (1936-1940 гг.), Tiflis 1941 (work on the Trialeti culture, excavations 1936-1940).
  • Материалы к археологии Колхиды, Tiflis 1949–1950 ( Colchis archeology).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Boris Moisheson: Armenoids in prehistory , University Press of America, 2001, p 69th
  2. ^ Adam T. Smith: The Caucasus and the Near East , in: DT Potts (ed.): A Companion to the Archeology of the Ancient Near East , Vol. 2, Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, pp. 668-686, here : P. 675 f.
  3. ^ Deceased Academicians , Georgian Academy of Sciences website.
  4. ^ Review of the German edition by Karl Jettmar in Central Asiatic Journal 42 (1998) 315-318 ( online , PDF, 3 MB).
personal data
SURNAME Kuftin, Boris Alexejewitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kuftin, Boris; Куфтин, Борис Алексеевич
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian ethnologist and archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 2, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Samara
DATE OF DEATH 2nd August 1953
Place of death Jurmala