Archaeological Commission

Archaeological Commission 

an organizational and scientific center of Russian prerevolutionary archaeology. Located in St. Petersburg, it was founded in 1859. Its chairmen were S. G. Stroganov, A. A. Vasil’chikov, and A. A. Bobrinskii. In 1889 the Archaeological Commission was granted exclusive rights for approving and supervising excavations on state municipal and peasant lands. The commission conducted work in the preservation and restoration of ancient monumental remains. It published the annual journals Otchety from 1859 to 1913/15 (1862–1918) and Izvestiia from 1901 to 1918. The commission also issued Materialy po arkheologii Rossii (37 vols., 1866–1918) and separate high-quality publications. In 1919 the Archaeological Commission was disbanded, and the functions of a coordinating center of Soviet archaeology were entrusted to the newly organized Russian Academy of the History of Material Culture in Petrograd.