Aleksander K. Konopatskii. 2021. Aleksei P. Okladnikov: the great explorer of the past. Volume II: a biography of a Soviet archaeologist (1960s–1980s). Translated by Richard L. Bland & Yaroslav V. Kuzmin. Oxford: Archaeopress; 978-1-78969-707-0 paperback £34.99.

Abstract

paperback £34.99.Volume I of Aleksei P. Okladnikov: the great explorer of the past related the first half of Okladnikov's life and career (see Leach 2020). During the Soviet era, Aleksei P. Okladnikov (1908Okladnikov ( -1981 was a dominant figure in Siberian archaeology. To a large extent self-taught and with an almost uncanny ability to discover prehistoric sites, he enjoyed a prestigious position at the Institute of the History of Material Culture (IIMK) by 1949. His downfall occurred after his paper in praise of the archaeological theorist Nicholai Y. Marr was published in 1950 at just the time when Marr's theories fell dramatically out of favour (Okladnikov 1950).Volume II opens in the early 1960s when his career was resurrected. He was invited to become head of the Division of Humanitarian Studies at the Siberian branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, Siberia. Novosibirsk remained his base for the rest of his life. He was, by and large, able to confine his administrative duties to the winter, and from spring to autumn he mounted annual expeditions ranging over enormous distances, across Siberia, Mongolia and Central Asia.He was supported by successive cohorts of loyal students, including the author of this biography, A.K. Konopatskii. Konopatskii is keenly appreciative of his teacher's achievements, but also acknowledges his flaws. While Okladnikov was open and approachable, he could also be vain and jealous of others' discoveries. He possessed a childlike curiosity, but could also be naïve and gullible. He was a conformist in politics. Thus, for example, "in the 1950s he derived all prehistoric cultural elements in Primor'e (the Maritime Province) from neighbouring China. In the 1970s, after the break of the Soviet authorities with Mao Zedong, Okladnikov denied any Chinese influence" (p. xxvi).