Have you dreamed of visiting an archaeological excavation, but don't feel like baking under the sun?
The Museum of Archaeological Wood “Tatarskaya Slobodka” in Sviyazhsk was invented especially for you! These are real archaeological excavations, which have been preserved and arranged so that you can look at them without becoming involved in the dirty (including in the literal sense of the word, because excavations are carried out in any weather) side of archaeological practice. You will find three meters of cultural layer, a multi-level reconstruction of the ancient settlement from the original (!) archaeological wood. By the way, the outside of the museum is disguised as a hill, because the island town of Sviyazhsk is a UNESCO cultural heritage site, and its appearance cannot be distorted, but Russian specialists were able to solve this complex technical problem.
There are only three such museums in the world: one in Swedish Stockholm, one in Belarusian Brest, and one in Russia, in Sviyazhsk near Kazan. It is along it that we will now walk with our author, Snezhana Zyubanova, who recently visited it.
The first impression of the museum is the smell of wood. This is what the bathhouse smells like. Nice, fragrant, dense woody aroma. Why? The fact is that the amazing preservation of the tree that you see in the images gave us a “wet” cultural layer. What it is? A “wet” cultural layer is a layer of earth in which humidity is extremely high. Most often it forms in regions with a humid climate and near natural bodies of water. And Sviyazhsk is a historical city on an island located at the confluence of the Sviyaga River with the Volga, which provided suitable conditions for the preservation of ancient artifacts. Why is this so important?
When the soil is saturated with water, practically no oxygen reaches the objects located there. Under anaerobic conditions, organic materials (wood, leather, bone, etc.) practically do not deteriorate, since the microorganisms that destroy them do not live in such conditions. It is because of this that wooden structures in general have been preserved, as well as many other exhibition samples that can be seen in the photographs below.
This museum has a charming and mysterious atmosphere. There is basically no general, overhead lighting here. Only the excavation itself below and the display cases with exhibits are illuminated. This creates an indescribable atmosphere, as if you dived into the darkness of centuries and plunged into these layers of history. However, that’s almost how it is.
The main honor of the museum is an archaeological excavation of 900 square meters, where historical periods of three centuries are “revealed,” which are located on three tiers. In the lower part, “on the ground,” there are objects from the 16th century. On the podium are from the 17th century, and suspended are finds from the 18th century. Each object is located exactly in the place where it was found! There is no displacement. You know, even archaeologists during excavations cannot get acquainted with such a beautiful visual, because they remove layer by layer, and you see it all recreated, but without the earth!
Another unique thing about the museum is that all the exhibits on display were directly found right here. In this very excavation. It is possible that they were lying right under your feet. Preserved fragments of clothing and shoes, jewelry that people wore in the 16th century along this alley that you are walking over in the 21st century. Or a toy that a child played with in this house, which is right in front of you, recreated from surviving artifacts. Small coins, fragments of dishes, household utensils and tools – everything was kept here by the earth.
A man and a woman appear before you as ghosts of the past in one of the shop windows. Exhibits of costume from the 16th and 17th centuries are located according to their places against the background of human silhouettes. Here's a meeting in an old alley. Look at them with our eyes in the photo in the carousel.
Ancient bunks peer out from behind the glass, bast shoes flaunt, window mica glitters… And here are the ashes… A fire in a wooden village is a terrible thing. Is it possible to bring the smell of burning and grief across centuries?
By the way, did you know that fires can help archaeologists? In 2017, after large fires in the forests of America, American archaeologists found many working sites from the Great Depression period, which in normal conditions were so overgrown with grass, vines and trees that it was simply impossible to detect their traces! Or in Samara, next to the traces of fires, a large number of “new” artifacts were discovered, which archaeologists so rarely find, because people actively used the objects, but during a fire a lot of traces remain, since the ashes were not always restored. As archaeologists like to say: the best thing you can find is an ancient garbage pit. After all, waste clearly shows what was used, what was broken, how it was repaired.
But let's return to our museum. We walk along the burnt boards of the pavement. Of course, not for valuable exhibits! For a more immersive experience, the museum has a long multi-level bridge with a glass floor. It will allow you to truly walk through the back streets of centuries.
This museum itself became possible thanks to serious work: archaeologists and restorers from similar museums in Belarus and Sweden helped preserve the wood. Preserving wood is an extremely labor- and science-intensive process. The experience gained is very important for Russian archaeology, restoration and museum work. Speaking of restoration. In addition to the opportunity to look at the excavations, very interesting are the display cases with restored products from the Middle Ages, conservation of various artifacts, as well as household items from the 16th-17th centuries, which were also found in the excavation site, which is literally located under your feet. This restoration was carried out by the brilliant Russian archaeologist and restorer Alexander Nikolaevich Popov.
Scientists from Russia and the world gather annually in Sviyazhsk to scientifically discuss the problem of the preservation of archaeological wood. Japan or Germany, Belarus or Russia – it’s not so important; conservation and preservation of wood is a complex process. Nowadays, polyethylene glycol solutions are mainly used; they are relatively safe for the restorer, and the processed products are completely safe for visitors. Previously, various solutions were used, for example, based on phenolic alcohols, which are very poisonous for restorers.
When properly processed, wood does not require unique storage conditions. The balance of temperature and humidity, of course, must be maintained; this also requires the active use of modern technologies, but quite familiar to us. However, this museum can still be considered a kind of “lifetime monument” to archaeologists and restorers who were able to preserve a lot of wooden, and other, products and make them available for viewing.
Despite the fact that the museum is archaeological, it has a lot of the latest technology. For example, interactive screens where you can select the view you are interested in. There is an opportunity to watch a video with a detailed explanation of technologies, wood processing processes in the past, and wood conservation in the present. Visual reconstructions that you can even touch will also help with this. Along the way, on the screens you can study changes in the layout of Sviyazhsk over the centuries, significant events, water levels, etc. Modern technologies make it possible to enrich even the richest museum. About wealth: gold items, weapons, other valuable items, including weapons and even fishing equipment – there is a lot of everything; the museum has about 5,000 (!) exhibits, the vast majority of which are available for viewing.
And finally, like the icing on a cupcake, we see an animated panel as much as 21 meters long! There are 450 characters involved in 120 scenes! All of them depict the life of the island city of Sviyazhsk. You can spy on the usual “everyday life” that is boiling around you, but several centuries ago. Here they do laundry, fish, build a church, trade, chop wood and cook food. If you are careful, you will find a camel, flying birds, our conflagration and elements of BDSM. This impressive work was performed by Sviyazhsk artist Rashid Safiullin together with specialists from the Samrukh creative association. All characters and situations are mentioned in the Sviyazhsk scribe book of 1565−1567, historical plans and engravings of the 18th−19th centuries.
And I was there, drinking mead and beer… If at first the exhibition seems strange, then the more you look, the more you are drawn in. In the process of studying the exhibits, the imagination begins to run wild, fortunately, the surrounding atmosphere contributes to this. Scattered artifacts form an overall picture, which acquires volume in the space of the excavation. And now you want to walk around the museum premises a second time, and take a closer look at the remains of these houses, place the characters with the panels in these alleys, wearing them in the preserved bast shoes from the display case. And you no longer just look at an old tree, but feel the breath of centuries stored in it.
Cats, if you think that looking at pieces of wood is boring, I advise you to go to this museum and have more time left.
Author: Snezhana Zyubanova
