Life after theory: provincial russian archaeology of the late bronze age

It took 25 years after the dissolution of the Soviet system. There is no more Soviet ideology in archaeology. What is the methodology of archaeology has replaced Marxism? During the Soviet period the main problem of archaeology was to reconstruct the cultural and historical development of ancient societies. Development of Soviet archaeology and new “processual” archaeology in the sphere of theoretical notions underwent similar stages. Some Russian and foreign scientists distinguished similar tendencies. It should be noted that national socio-archaeology and “new archaeology” have similar theoretical and methodological approaches. Establishing of common sociological concept in Soviet archaeology was a regular stage of development of scientific knowledge in the sphere of investigation of ancient cultures by means of archaeological sources. This concept integrated the most important achievements of not only Russian (argument of P. N. Tretyakov, adopted by G. Childe, went down in history as Deetz/Longacre argument). In the late 1980’s, archaeology has become Neo-Marxist methodology. A separate direction in the theory of archaeology of this period was the “samizdat”, which collected materials of bourgeois’ content. But at the present time in Russia there are no theoretical constructs. We see the crisis of Russian archaeological theory.