“Antiquity” and “Archeology”: the Evolution of Concepts and its Using in an Educational Process (on the Example of Kharkiv University 1805–1884)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the formation of historical education at Kharkiv Сlassic University especially such academic discipline as «Archeology». The author aims to discover the terminology of educational courses and the development of its concept for tracing the process of beginning teaching the elements of archeology and its formation as a separate discipline in the educational courses of the University. It is mentioned that from the first half of the ХІХ century the term «Archeology» was only appeared in scientific turnover and rarely appeared in the names of an educational courses. The term «antiquity» was used for the academic disciplines which were connected with the distant past. In this period the courses with the similar names had literary-philological and historical character and nearly connected with the archeology in its modern meaning. From the second half of the ХІХ century the situation changed. The question about the development of archeology was sharply rose in the Russian Empire, Archeological Congresses were conducted. Systematic archaeological excavations began, so qualified specialists were needed. But there were not such separate academic discipline as «Archeology» because of the lack of the specialists and teaching staff. The basis for archeology knowledge was the teaching of the disciplines of philological profile. Particular attention to the ancient languages oriented students to the acquisition of ancient social and cultural values. In the second half of the ХІХ century, there were qualitative changes in the archeological science itself. The first generalizations appear, but teaching has fallen short of scientific achievements. The author points that professor M. Aristov (1834–1882) was the first who taught the courses which had archeological specialization, but there were no term «archeology» in its name.