'Our Native Antiquity'

<p><i>“‘Our Native Antiquity’: Archaeology and Aesthetics in theCulture of Russian Modernism </i>is one of those works whose theme seems to lie in plain view, but, untilthe appearance of this study, remained unnoticed… It introduces essentialcorrectives to the history of national-cultural self-consciousness…. theauthor’s achievement is outstanding. [It] allows one to present modernism notonly as a revolution of ideas and aesthetic tastes, but as a transformation ofthe symbolic ‘habitat,’ with an entire gamut of new sensations accompanyingthis radical restructuring of the cultural ecology.” —Boris Gasparov, <i>AbImperio</i></p> <p>“<i>‘Our Native Antiquity’</i> makes a valuable contribution to the emergent field ofinterdisciplinary scholarship scrutinizing the object world, in particular therole of artifacts in literary texts (as in the work of Bill Brown), in the Slavicfield and beyond. Even such media spectacles as Vladimir Putin’s 2011 scubadive to ‘recover’ ancient amphorae take on new meaning in light of Kunichika’sbook, which makes clear that establishing Russia’s links with antiquity haslong had implications for the nation''s sense of self-worth. The past is arenewable resource.” —Julia Bekman Chadaga, <i>Slavic Review</i></p> For Russian modernists in search of a past, there were many antiquities of different provenances and varying degrees of prestige from which to choose: Greece or Rome; Byzantium or Egypt. The modernists central to <i>"Our Native Antiquity"</i> located their antiquity in the Eurasian steppes, where they found objects and sites long denigrated as archaeological curiosities. The book follows the exemplary careers of two objects—the so-called “Stone Women” and the kurgan, or burial mound—and the attention paid to them by Russian and Soviet archaeologists, writers, artists, and filmmakers, for whom these artifacts served as resources for modernist art and letters and as arenas for a contest between vying conceptions of Russian art, culture, and history.