The 7th Russian-Hungarian Ural Archaeological Expedition took place from 1-22 July 2019 as a joint project of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Hungarian Archaeological Theme Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Hungarian participants worked alongside their Russian colleagues in Kazan, Samara, Ufa, and Moscow, conducting new scientific research.
This year, our focus was primarily on Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, regions where Hungarian and international research groups have recently highlighted a close connection between the 10th century and the present-day Hungarian population. Our first stop was Tatarstan, where the discovery of early medieval artefacts in the 1970s revolutionized the study of Hungarian prehistory.
In the context of a research agreement with Kazan Federal University and the Archaeological Institute of the Tatar Academy of Sciences, we selected the Tankejevka cemetery for our first joint fieldwork. This cemetery, with a long history of research and more than 1,500 graves, was the subject of the first monographic publication in French in 1977. Due to continuous erosion at its location on the high bank, excavation work had been interrupted in 1988, making it clear that the site needed renewed attention. We agreed with our Tatar colleagues to resume the excavation and continue efforts to document and preserve the cemetery.
We also discussed the status of the manuscript for a bilingual, colour catalogue of the cemetery monograph, which is expected to be a significant publication for European scholarship and will greatly aid in the identification of Hungarians who remained in the East, from a Hungarian historical perspective.
In the second week of July 2019, after our time in Tatarstan, we travelled south to Samara along the middle course of the Volga River. There, archaeologists and students from Samara State University were excavating a fascinating Khazar-era stone-packed kurgan in the southern part of the Samara Volga Bend, near Malaya Ryazan. The excavation was led by Sergei Zubov and Nikolai Lifanov, and we had the opportunity to participate in the ongoing research.
During the weekend, we visited a settlement excavation in the northern part of the same region, at Vlasty Truda, which is of Uralic and Kama rural origin. This excavation was carried out by staff from the Samara Local History Museum. The site is of great significance due to its connection to the presumed crossing of the Volga River by the ancestors of the Hungarians, as well as the evidence it provides for early Turkish-Hungarian language contact.
Our presence in Samara drew the attention of the local press. After an archaeological masterclass led by Dmitry Stasenkov at the Samara Local History Museum, we held a press conference with our Samara colleagues, discussing our findings and future plans.
The third stop of our 2019 study trip took us to Bashkortostan, where we continued excavating the remarkable Bustanayevo kurgan from the previous year. This Kushnarenkovo culture cemetery, dating from the second half of the 6th century AD, remains the best-preserved site for tracing the migration of the ancestors of the Hungarians from the eastern Urals.
On our way home, we made a brief stop in Moscow, where we spent a day and a half visiting the State History Museum’s permanent archaeological exhibition and collecting the latest relevant literature at the Archaeological Institute.
