Crossroads of the worlds. Arkaim

For the first time in Moscow, the Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve displays unique archaeological artifacts from Bronze Age sites, the most famous of which, Arkaim, was discovered in the South Ural steppes 35 years ago.

Arkaim is the same age as the English Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. This is a fortified settlement of the Middle Bronze Age of the 21st-17th centuries BC. was discovered by an archaeological expedition of the Chelyabinsk State University in 1987.

The lands on which the excavations were carried out were intended for flooding during the construction of the Bolshekaragan reservoir. But thanks to the efforts of Ural archaeologists, with the support of the Director of the State Hermitage, Academician Boris Piotrovsky, Chairman of the Presidium of the Ural Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Academician Gennady Mesyats, a decision was made to preserve the monument. At the moment, the reserve "Arkaim" is one of the most famous places in the Urals.

The Bronze Age, including the “Arkaim” period, largely set the vectors for the development of mankind in the form in which we observe it today: technological specializations and innovations, large-scale architectural structures, social transformations, development of communications and general urbanization and globalization.

Arkaim is a settlement created according to a single architectural project, surrounded by powerful defensive structures - a wall and a moat. At the settlement there is a burial ground where its inhabitants were buried. According to various estimates, the population of Arkaim numbered up to 2.5 thousand people, whom anthropologists attribute to the Caucasoid anthropological type. This is one of the settlements, the so-called "Country of cities", which includes more than 20 fortified settlements and their accompanying necropolises.

With great success the exhibition “Arkaim. Country of Cities" was shown in France in 2010-2011 and in Kazan in 2013. In 2022, the Moscow State United Museum-Reserve will host an archaeological exposition on its territory. At first glance, there is nothing in common between Arkaim and Kolomenskoye, but this is not so.

One of the largest archaeological collections in the country is stored in the Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve. It has about a hundred thousand museum items, which mainly tell about the so-called "Dyakovo culture". Therefore, the exhibition “Crossroads of Worlds. Arkaim" will become a kind of "dialogue" of two cultures.

Another point of contact was such a definition as a “place of power” or a cult place, in which, according to representatives of the respective movements, there is a “special energy”. Often “places of power” appear after attracting public attention to them by specialists - archaeologists, ethnographers or historians, who have suggested or established its connection with worship in antiquity. For example, attention to the boulders in the Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve was attracted by the historian A.S. Chigrin, who worked as a guide in the museum and shared his hypotheses with visitors, and Arkaim became a “place of power” thanks to archaeologists who connected it with the Aryans (ancient Iranians).

The main participants of the exhibition were the museums of the Southern Urals. Six museum collections will meet in the Podklet exhibition hall of the Palace of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. The exhibition will feature 656 exhibits, including the latest archaeological finds. Products made of metal, bone, stone, bronze and gold jewelry, ceramics, anthropological portraits, clothing reconstructions, models of dwellings.

Visitors will be able to learn about the religious beliefs of the ancient Arkaim people, their economic structure and home life, and get acquainted with ancient technologies. The exhibition is complemented by unique documentary materials provided by the State Archives of the Russian Federation, as well as photographs, field journals and archaeological tools. The exposition will also feature works by contemporary artists and designers of the Southern Urals, for whom Arkaim has become a source of inspiration.