This article examines the information capabilities of the complex of documents of various contents residing in the State Archive of the Republic of the Crimea (Simferopol), supplying information on the works of customs and quarantine institutions in the Russian Imperial Period. The Crimean Peninsula, which entered the Russian Empire in 1783, from that time on was considered a significant and strategically important region by the central authorities, because of its location on the southern borders and the role of an outpost of the Russian foreign and customs policy. Simultaneously, there appeared a system of quarantine institutions created with the aim of prevention of viral diseases before they entered the Empire or suppression of them. In this regard, the Crimea became the “testing ground” for the customs and quarantine institutions, later spread through all Russia according to the “Crimean standard.” The archival documents suggest a complete picture of the diversity of functions of customs and quarantine control in the Crimean Peninsula, allowing the scholarly reconstruction of the history of the works of these institutions, the analysis of the features of the organization of their work, and the tracing of the main directions of export and import operations covered by the Crimean customs. Among the most important aspects of the given research, there is the possibility to use the archival documents as the background to identify the features of administrative communication in the structures of the customs and quarantine institutions and to obtain the account of their official and bureaucratic composition.
The dependence of Chersonese from the Seleucids and at the same time from Bosporos allows another interpretation of the Chersonesan coinage in the period in question. Bosporan King Perisades III gained influence over Chersonese due to some agreements that remains unknown to us. Iconography of Chersonesan coins from 187–175 BC shows the Bosporan ruler’s attributes, namely the images of a griffin and a gorytos on the lower denominations. On the senior denomination of silver coins there is an image of the head of Parthenos and a butting bull, the latter previously known when Chersonese was owned by Bosporos. Obviously, there was some kind of alliance, not only with Seleukos IV, but also with Philip V of Macedon in the person of the Bosporan King Perisades III, determining the policy of Chersonese and reflecting on the coins.
90 years have passed from the investigations of the Yevpatoria expedition of the State Academy for the History of Material Culture (SAHMC). Numerous archival documents now serve as witnesses of this scholarly undertaking. Epistolary materials shed light on the reasons and circumstances of the organization, the main sequence of events, the timing and scale of the expedition. The new source data have been analysed in the context of the museum and archaeological environment of the Crimean ASSR in the 1930s. The article attempts to reconstruct the biography of one of the correspondents. Ia. G. Blagodarnyi. The research has added previously unknown details on the period of P. N. Schul’ts’s academic biography, and has clarified why the researcher turned to the studies in the Crimean archaeology. There have been revealed the continuity of the work of the SAHMC Yevpatoria Expedition and the previous and subsequent archaeological researches in the north-western Crimea.
This article has systematized the experience in research of mediaeval historical and archaeological monuments located in the modern village of Pionerskoe near Simferopol, primarily Eski-Dzhami mosque and the ruins of, presumably, caravanserai. The current stage of research produced numerous hypotheses, often contradicting each other and based both on scientific facts and on groundless guesses. This study is aimed at the elimination of the gaps in the history of research of the said objects from the last quarter of the eighteenth century on. It widely uses the writings of many travellers who visited the Crimean Peninsula both for personal reasons and by office duty (A. N. Demidov, F. Dubois de Montpereux, Ch. Montandon, P. S. Pallas, P. I. Sumarokov, and others), and also academic publications by Russian researchers of ancient monuments (B. N. Zasypkin, E. D. Zilivinskaia, V. P. Kirilko, A. L. Iakobson, and others). Historical sources from earlier period (the works of Evliya Çelebi and others) and materials from the map collection of the A. Kh. Steven Taurica Scholarly Library at the Central Museum of the Taurida (Simferopol) are also attracted. The main stages of the research of the monuments have been determined, and the experience of monument identification in the Russian scholarship has been summarized. The first attempts to preserve and protect architectural sites related to the works of the Taurida Scholarly Archival Commission in the late-nineteenth century have been characterized. The experience of archaeological research of the mosque has been presented.
This article discusses a counterfeit Tyrolean thaler of the Erzherzog Ferdinand of Austria (1564–1595) minted in the period contemporary to him and discovered in the south-eastern Crimea (in the environs of the modern village of Grushevka, Sudak administrative area). This is high-quality counterfeit of a large-denomination European coin, made with a unique technology of soldering silver plates onto a base metal blank. Along with other counterfeits and authentic examples of foreign coins discovered in the Crimea, this find shows that the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century money of various European issuers penetrated to the peninsula, and that, apparently, in the Early Modern Period, foreign currency took part in the coin circulation in the Taurica in this or that way along with the coins minted by the Crimean khans and Ottoman sultans.
