Exhibition "Archaeology"

About exhibition

The exhibition presents elements of the material culture of the earliest tribes and peoples who lived on the territory of present-day Karachay-Cherkess Republic from the Stone Age to the late Middle Ages. All exhibits are authentic; they were collected by archaeologists as a result of excavations and scientific expeditions to all corners of Karachay-Cherkessia in the 20th and early 21st centuries. There are also items gathered by local historians and schoolteachers with young history enthusiasts, as well as chance finds discovered during earthworks or in fields, gardens, and on riverbanks. All items are carefully preserved in the museum-reserve's storage facilities. In the showcases, arranged by complexes in chronological order, are objects whose ages are measured in centuries and millennia, and some — in tens and even hundreds of millennia, such as the stone tools from the "Triangle" cave, found by Soviet archaeologists in 1986 on Mount Baranakh in the Urupsky district of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic. These stone tools were made about 500,000 years ago; this is the oldest Paleolithic site in the North Caucasus. Also on display are beautiful bronze items such as plaques, medallions, buckles, mirrors, buttons, ornamental pieces, pendants, fibulae, earrings, and bracelets, some of them decorated with extremely fine ornamentation. The Early Iron Age is represented by items from late Koban and Scytho-Sarmatian-Meotian settlements and burials, including spear and arrowheads, akinakes (short swords), horse harness fittings, jugs, and jewelry.