ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES OF THE SYAS RIVER BASIN IN THE CATALOGUE BY IVAN ROMANTSEV (1911)
In summer of 1911, the XV All-Russian Archaeological Congress was held in Novgorod. Specially for this occasion, Ivan Romantsev compiled the catalogue of the archaeological sites. The article is devoted to the catalogue’s information about the sites in the area of the Syas River basin (most of the territory belonged to Tikhvin county of the Novgorod province before the revolution). Particular attention is paid to the comparison of sources used by researcher with the catalogue data. The main source of the catalogue is so-called programs of archaeological survey, filled in by the representatives of the local population who were supposed to answer specific questions. These programs have not been published and are kept in the Department of written sources of the Novgorod State United Museum-Reserve. It turned out that, Ivan Romantsev studied carefully the information of archaeological survey programs of the territory, listing them in the catalogue and omitting details that were not relevant to the goals he had set (for example, ethnographic information - about the attitude of the local population to archaeological sites, etc.). It should be noted that most of the catalogue’s data about archaeological sites was published for the first time. Many of the sites were not saved up to now. Thus, the work of Ivan Romantsev in some cases is the only source from which we can learn about the existence of certain archaeological sites.