Exhibition "Long Before Novosibirsk"

About exhibition

Novosibirsk is a young city; its history is linked to the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the late 19th century. But people lived here at least 5,000 years before the railway arrived. This is evidenced by archaeological sites within the city. In recent years, staff from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have conducted rescue investigations at new construction sites. The exhibition displays materials about the archaeological sites Razyezd Inya‑1, Turist‑2, and the village of Krivoshchekova. The earliest finds date to the Neolithic (4th–3rd centuries BCE) and the Early Bronze Age. Successive ancient and later medieval cultures continued to inhabit this place. Much of the exhibition is devoted to the history of peasant settlement along the Ob River. These are the results of rescue archaeological excavations carried out in 2018 at the site of Krivoshchekova—the oldest village within the city's limits, founded in the early 18th century. The exhibition is complemented by family heirlooms and the stories of residents of the modern Bugrinsky microdistrict, located on the site of the historic village of Bugry. For several generations people who remember their history have lived here.