Pity the Poor Archaeologist

First the good news. In another signal example of international cooperation, Professor Joseph Carter of the University of Texas has been allowed to open up an archaeological dig at Chersonesos in the Crimea.


Now the bad news. It's unlikely, like other signal examples of international cooperation these days, to last for very long.


Chersonesos -- and I owe this information to the London Guardian -- is an ancient Crimean settlement, founded originally by Dorian Greeks, who made a bonanza in local grapes and cereals. With the decline of Greece, it fell under the loose suzerainty, first of Rome, and then of Byzantium. But it remained independent. It was the longest-lasting independent city of the ancient world, until it was taken by the Mongols at the end of the 14th century.


So far, so good, you might think -- a treasure-trove for modern archaeologists -- and you would be right. The Soviets, after all, had their fair share of skillful diggers, as anyone who has seen the Scythian collection at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg knows. And the Russians do now. But in the case of Chersonesos, the resident archaeologists always had to deal with an extra, somewhat ticklish problem. For the city's ruins are next door to Sevastopol, hard by the entrance to the Crimean headquarters of the Black Sea fleet. And this means that anyone working on the site in the past -- so long as he had his sight and couldn't resist the temptation to look around -- was in possession of important state secrets. Stanislav Ryzhkov, the site's deputy director, for example, has apparently been working at Chersonesos for 20 years. But until now, he has never been allowed either to travel abroad or to discuss his findings with Western colleagues, for fear that he might blurt out details of radar installations, artillery strengths and the color of Soviet admirals' swimwear.


Well, that's all over now, of course. There is no longer any disguising of the fact that the Black Sea fleet is being ferociously haggled over by Russia and Ukraine, and that the whole lot is either rotting or fast approaching its sell-by date. Enter left Professor Carter, the first Westerner to be able to admire first-hand Chersonesos's Byzantine arches, Roman masonry and Greek foundations -- and to wonder at the Navy training ship lying like a beached whale on the ancient sea-walls.


Stop there and imagine for a moment. Here is a priceless archaeological site, some two and a half thousand years old, with brightly decorated tombstones that are "perhaps the best example of the Greeks' use of color" and ruined farmhouses which "offer the most extensive evidence anywhere of how the Greeks organized agriculture." And there is a wrecked training ship that is just been lying there, having run aground a year ago, because the Navy has ignored persistent requests to take it away. "They have too many internal problems," Ryzhkov said sadly to the Guardian's Julian Berger, "to worry about anything else."


And too many retired naval officers, it seems, crying out for dachas. For this is the second problem facing Professor Carter now that he is on site. In the old days, the area round Chersonesos was protected as a designated military area. But now the land is up for grabs, mainly by old salts who are looking for their just deserts for services rendered, and are in no mood to give much of a hoot for ancient buildings and buried farm implements.


An abandoned ship that no one gives much of a damn about, and grizzled old Hornblowers putting down roots and boots and vegetable gardens in a virtually unregulated housing boom: that is not all that Professor Carter has to contend with. His team was recently run off one important site by sinister heavies who offered no explanation or identification at all. They were later identified as the protection arm of the Crimean antiquities mafia, which is on the lookout for buried treasure -- and no doubt doing side-deals with the old sea dogs' builders for anything they may turn up.


There you are: end of story, and end of road, perhaps, for Professor Carter. Chersonesos is about fall victim of local greed and naval politics and international crime. It will disappear into a gap between culture and defense ministries and become a mere footnote to history -- unless someone comes up with the money to protect it. The Russians don't have it. And the West is unlikely to give it, because of anxiety about, yes, local greed and naval politics and international crime. So it goes. Round and round. Pity the poor archaeologist.