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Abstract

The article provides information on the abstracts of A. P. Prokofi ev’s scientifi c work “On the archaeological sites of the Chuvash Republic based on data of ancient Chuvash cemeteries,” stored in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. According to the scientist, the change in cultural and historical stages could be traced especially clearly by the funerary monuments of the region in the ancient Chuvash semi-pagan and semi-Muslim cemeteries, where there were artistically decorated tombstones with Muslim writing. The scientist noted that stone Muslim monuments can be divided into genuinely Bulgarian stones and Tatar stones. Bulgarian stones were of particular interest, because, according to his assumption, the Bulgarians started the spread of Islam in the region, and the Tatars were only the successors of this Muslim culture in the Volga-Kama region. On Bulgarian stones, along with Muslim-Arabic religious writing, there were many Chuvash elements, individual words and expressions. Later Tatar stones contained purely Arabic religious script without including elements of the Chuvash language, only occasionally there were elements of the Tatar language. The description of the stones was carried out by the scientist in the summer of 1925 on the territory of Cheboksary and Tsivilsky districts: location, size, safety, and the presence of inscriptions. The scientist claimed that all the stones were photographed by him, but there are no photographs in the fi le, as well as a schematic drawing of the cemetery in the village of Stary Urmary. It can be assumed that they were preserved in the documents of the Institute of Linguistics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The presented information will allow expanding the source base on the history of ethnographic and archaeological research in the regions of Russia and can be used for research and educational purposes.

Keywords

Archaeology, Chuvash Republic, A.P. Prokofi ev, Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences.