My first week on the Russian forest steppe

I’ve been in Stepnoye in rural Russia for a week now and the excavation of the Late Bronze Age site has begun. In my last post from Stepnoye, I wrote about our first two days where the excavation hadn’t yet started, but it did the day after. Erin, Ken, Jim and I spent the first three days at work digging stratigraphic profiles, and after the other Danes arrived on June 1st, the actual excavation of the site began.

The work so far is great but hard, mainly because of the baking sun and the endless nats and flies trying to eat us alive. Generally, our days Monday-Saturday look like this: We get up at the butt crack of dawn, eat breakfast at 7.15 AM, work from 8 AM till 5 or 6 PM, eat dinner, have a few hours of free time and then go to bed. That means that we don’t have much free time during the weekdays and Saturdays, but we do get Sundays off to sleep in, relax and explore the area.

I will write a blog post at the end of my time here where I explain everything that went on at the excavation of Chernorech’ye II and post pictures from the excavation, and until then I’ll update you all on what we’re doing outside of the excavation work.

Erin, Ken, Jim and I spent some time the first week surveying other sites in the area, so we did get to do some exploring during the first weekdays. On our first day of work, we paid a visit to a Mesolithic site in the outskirts of Stepnoye, where we did a short survey, picking up a few flint flakes. The area was beautiful, surrounded by hills and sparse woodlands.

The next day, we finished work early so we could go to the Late Bronze Age Alakul Culture site of Streletsk by the Uy River, located halfway between Chernorech’ye and Stepnoye.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t locate the site as the area was too overgrown, but the river was beautiful and we had to do a short hike to get there, which was amazing.

When the other Danes had arrived, I wanted to show them some of Stepnoye, so we spent some of the Sunday exploring the village. I showed them the “center” with the small shops and park, and took a selfie with the town’s Lenin statue (as I always do when I spot Lenin – it’s a tradition!). I also found a cat; the first one that didn’t run away from me and actually let me pet her – yay!

Afterwards, we walked to the other part of Stepnoye across the Uy River, where Jim had taken Erin, Ken and I the day before. I loved this place, so I wanted to show it to the others as well. This part is much smaller than the part where we’re staying, and actually looks more like I’d imagined Stepnoye to be. The view from this part is amazing as it’s located on a hill. It’s also home to the village cemetery, which we unfortunately weren’t allowed to enter as it’s only permitted for family members.

So far, I’m having a lot of fun at the excavation, and I’m also really enjoying the exploring. I would love to explore more, but I’m hopeful that we’ll get to do that in the other weekends. One thing that has been bothering me here is the fact that our freedom is so restricted. We’re not allowed to leave the house unless at least one person is with us because of possible petty crime and harrassment, so I’m dependent on other people if I want to explore. I’m not used to this as I mostly travel alone and walk about on my own all around the world, so it’s a huge challenge for me. I don’t like just sitting around and being bored, but thankfully some of the others do want to explore sometimes, although I would go out more by myself if I could.

When I did an excavation on Bornholm in the summer of 2017, I spent all evenings and weekends biking around the island, and I had planned to explore Stepnoye and its surroundings this way as well (although walking instead of biking), but it’s simply not possible here, unfortunately. Still, I’m very grateful to be here, to experience rural Russia and to work on such an amazing excavation. I love that I’m able to combine my two passions of travel and archaeology like this!