Last Wednesday, at the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center, Pyotr Sorokin, head of the archaeological expedition of the North-Western Research Institute of Cultural and Natural Heritage, spoke at a meeting of the Arhnadzor club about the discoveries of archaeologists made at the site of the recently canceled Okhta Center construction site, and about new problems.
After the construction of the Okhta Center was canceled in December by the governor of St. Petersburg, its history bifurcated and began to develop in two directions. Representatives of Gazprom Neft are considering new sites for the construction of an office, resentfully threatening to leave St. Petersburg along with taxes (although, as Novaya Gazeta recently calculated, there are not so many of these taxes, only 5% of the city budget). Archaeologists, however, hope to create a museum on the site of four fortresses excavated at the mouth of the Okhta River and a unique Neolithic site. And also for the continuation of excavations. But so far there is no money even to properly preserve what has been found. For this, they brought an exhibition to the Moscow center of Andrei Sakharov - to attract attention, recalling the discovered historical values.
Although the excavations of Okhta are described in the most detailed way in the press, it is not a sin to repeat it. Firstly, there were discovered several Neolithic settlements that had existed since the fifth millennium BC on the shores of the former Litorin Sea (the Neva River had not yet formed), and washed away in the third millennium BC by a flood. What is left of these sites: wooden traps for fish, birch bark sinkers, crockery shards and amber buttons - this is a very extensive and well-preserved archaeological site, unique in the whole of Northern Europe. In addition, these are the first sites of the Neolithic era, found in the area (for that time, the future) of the Neva River. Among other things, their study could help scientists figure out when and how this strange river, flowing from the lake to the sea, was formed.
Further, archaeologists found a moat from the Novgorod (or Izhora) fortress, which no one ever knew about - there is no written evidence of this triangular “cape fortification” (this is a typical Old Russian type of fortification), and it is difficult to date it. But since the Swedish fortress Landskrona (this name is translated as "The crown of the land", perhaps because the fortress stood on the edge of the Swedish possessions), built in 1300, stands on top of this moat, it means that the Novgorod fortress was built earlier. Archaeologists roughly consider it to be built in the XIII century. But only one moat of this fortress got into the excavation zone, and the cape itself did not get there, so this find is still very little studied.
The Okhtinsky cape and the land around it constantly passed from the Russian to the Swedes and vice versa. The Landskrona fortress, which the Swedes built in 1300, was burned and destroyed a year later by the son of Alexander Nevsky, Prince Andrei Gorodetsky. Its foundations were found during excavations, wooden and with a rectangular plan. Landskorn was a large fortification, its southern wall alone was 100 meters long. It was about twice as large as the Vyborg fortress, was built 7 years earlier, and, as the chronicle says, a master from Rome took part in the construction. This means that this is the first Italian fortress built on Russian territory, 200 years older than the Moscow Kremlin, concludes Anatoly Kirpichnikov, doctor of sciences and teacher of Peter Sorokin (although we must not forget that the fortress, unlike the Kremlin, was built, of course, not by Russians, but by Swedes against Russians … but still).
As it turned out during the excavations, Landskrona was surrounded by two parallel lines of ditches, two meters deep and about three meters wide. There was a stream (or channel) behind the ditch, which was used as an additional natural barrier. Inside the fortress, the remains of three burned down, most likely during the assault, wooden buildings were found. And in its western part, archaeologists have discovered a very well-preserved frame - the base of a square fortress tower, an observation tower or even a donjon, a residential fortification (inside the tower, the remains of a well were found). Perhaps this blockhouse is the "burial tower", where, according to the "Chronicle of Eric", the Swedish defenders of the city locked themselves from the Novgorodians before finally surrendering. The blockhouse of 1300 could well have been taken out of the ground and transferred to a museum.
Some time after the fall of the Swedish Landskrona, the cape was occupied by the Russian trading settlement "Nevskoe Ustye"; the Swedes called him Nien. At the end of the 16th century, there was a seating yard, a pier and an Orthodox church. However, the ditches of the XIV century, albeit in part, were preserved and were probably used. In the Time of Troubles, these lands again passed to the Swedes, who in 1611 built a new fortress here, Nyenskans. From this, the first Nyenskans, the remains of the bastion system and sod masonry at the base of the rampart have been preserved. The second was built after the steward Potemkin took and destroyed, but could not hold the fortress in 1656. Between 1661 and 1677, the Swedes built a fortress in the form of a five-pointed star with five bastions (the peak of the achievements of the then fortification, there are a lot of such fortresses in Europe). New ditches appeared around the fortress, and inside - stone and wooden buildings.
Archaeologists investigated three bastions, Karlov, Dead and Helmfelt, moat and curtains between them, platforms for shooting during the siege; discovered a secret passage with a wooden door upholstered with metal stripes. A stone building with a copper-smelting furnace was found inside the fortress; its floor was paved with boulders. In the ditches, nuclei, shell fragments, mortar bombs weighing up to 75 kilograms, apparently left over from the last battle with Peter I in 1703, were found.
Thus, Pyotr Sorokin discovered on the Okhtinsky cape the "Petersburg Troy", a multi-layered and richest archaeological monument, which, according to the law, should be given a conservation status that prohibits building anything on its territory. The story with the excavations turned out to be no less “multi-layered”. In 2009, after the head of the expedition refused to sign documents permitting the construction of the discovered monuments on the territory, he was removed from excavations, inviting Natalia Solovyova, the head of the group of protective archeology at the Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to replace him. And the first, suspended group of archaeologists was sued, demanding the return of 29 million paid for the work. The archaeologists won the court at the end of 2010, almost simultaneously with the announcement of the cancellation of the construction of the tower, and even sued 11 million from the customers.
Natalya Solovieva, exploring, according to her, the "peripheral" areas on the Okhtinsky Cape, concluded that there were no Neolithic sites here, but people just came to this place to fish, that's how we now sometimes go fishing with tents. Working on the cape, which Sorokin did not have time to study, Natalya Solovyova did not find there any traces of the supposed Novgorod fortification of the 12th century. And in general, her conclusions are much more restrained. A group of experts led by Doctor of Sciences Leonid Belyaev calmly commented on the sensation, defining the safety of the finds as "low". Commenting on the disagreements among specialists, Kommersant notes that Gazprom finances security excavations at many construction sites and thus is an important customer of archaeological work …
More surprising is what Doctor of Sciences Sergei Beletsky said: Natalya Solovyova, whom the investor (UDC Okhta) invited to lead the excavation at the end of 2009, when he removed from the work of Pyotr Sorokin, threw open not only the monuments she studied, but also bastions previously mothballed by Sorokin. Her 2010 agreement simply did not include the conservation of the found monuments. By the spring, and maybe even earlier, with temperature changes, the remnants of Nyenskans will begin to collapse - spread out in the mud and rot.
Archaeologists propose to set up a museum on this site (there are several similar museums in Europe: the Daugavpils fortress in Latvia, Kastellet castle in Denmark, Burtange fortress in the Netherlands), there is even a project to create the St. Petersburg Archaeological Museum. As the head of the sector of architectural archeology of the Hermitage, Oleg Ionnisyan, rightly noted, preserving the ramparts in place is necessary so that later scientists can return to their study at a new level of knowledge and capabilities. So you can even build at this place, but so that access to the monuments is open and they are not destroyed, so the best way out is a landscape museum right at the site of the finds. The investor, I remember, also planned an archaeological museum, and even opened it in 2003. The Nyenskans Archaeological Museum was funded by the Okhta Cultural Heritage Fund in a building provided by Gazprom Neft. Well, it is clear that now the site of the museum and the fund is no longer available.
A recent investor is no longer interested in the lost site, lamenting the 7.2 billion rubles invested in it. Of course, and this is understandable, it is a shame to understand that "Gazprom paid for the death of its offspring": they paid for the excavations, and that's how it turned out. So pay them now for the excavation! Valentina Matvienko announced in December that the city had no money to implement the “patron project”. Does it mean that the remains of the fortress should rot? They would be better preserved in the ground … Until a generation came, endowed with the opportunity to study and museify.
Frankly speaking, the story of the Okhta Center, aka "Gazpromskreb", looks both long and complex, filled to capacity with some kind of extra ardor, ambition and authority. People endowed with power and money in this story look - well, of course, to the outside and inexperienced look of amateurs - somehow infantile. Like offended children, slamming the door, they left, leaving a heap of torn up toys - we no longer hang out. But if we compare the amounts, archeology took about 5-6% of the total costs in this whole story: the figures were announced of 300 million spent on Sorokin's expedition in 2006-2009, and 120 million on Solovieva's 2010 expedition. That's about 100 million a year for extensive excavations. Preservation needs definitely less. Generally speaking, it would be beautiful and, as they say, in a European way, if Gazprom simply cleaned up after itself, mothballed what was excavated. To this story would be added a drop of honor, which she so lacks.
Specialists, people who are at times poorer and less influential (although Anatoly Kirpichnikov in 2009 boasted that he had told the president's wife about the findings of archaeologists, and the construction site was canceled even after a year) - the specialists also look different. They throw half-open excavations into the winter, which is simply unprofessional. They bow down and thank you for funding the protective excavations required by law. That requires a museum. However, on the site bashne.net, almost 50,000 people voted against the tower, although during the entire period of the struggle against it, for the museum - so far only 1356, and this is no less, and perhaps more important, matter.
A small exhibition (about a dozen tablets with photographs) in the Sakharov Center should draw attention to the problem. But we need to involve him urgently, before spring comes. Spring, however, is just around the corner. She will come and everything will melt.
The exhibition will be open until January 30.
