Before the Revolution there were only four women in the entire Russian Empire who worked on their own archaeological excavations. These were: the countess Paraskovia Uvarova, Yulia Gendune, Kateryna Melnyk-Antonovych, and Anastasia Kartsova (born Myklashevska). The last two were Ukrainian. While there are at least some publications about Melnyk-Antonovych, almost nobody knows anything about our compatriot Kartsova-Myklashevska. Kartsova was six years older than Melnyk-Antonovych. History books mention somewhat imprecisely that Melnyk-Antonovych “took part in archeological excavations near Shumsk.” This means that Kartsova could have started her own excavation works even earlier than Melnyk-Antonovych did. Regardless of whether this was the case, there is one thing that goes without any doubt: “Kartsova was an active assistant of the famous archaeologists of that time — Dmytro Samokvasov and Dmytro Yavornytsky.”
Yavornytsky called Kartsova a passionate amateur of archeology. He even wrote an article called Woman in Archeology about her in 1884. Although Gendune is called the first Russian professional female archaeologist, one must remember that when Yavornytsky’s article was published Gendune was only 21, while Kartsova was 33. It means she was 12 years older and therefore became engaged in archeology earlier. Who should then be called the first? Only countess Uvarova (born princess Shcherbatova) was older than our countrywoman.
The historians from Dnipropetrovsk, Iryna Kovaliova and Anna Rudenko, discussed Kartsova’s life in a scientific digest. Afterwards we started searching for information about Kartsova and soon added some more facts to their pioneering work.
The modern researcher from Kursk professor Shcheveliov, the author of the article about Ukrainian archeology in Samokvasov’s correspondence (Arkheologia, Kyiv, 1994, No.1) called Kartsova a female archeologist who worked on excavations on her own, which was extremely rare in pre-revolutionary Russia. Archeology at the time had only four representatives of “ladies’ element” (according to an expression of the famous archaeologist duke Aleksey Uvarov, who tried to limit the presence of the “ladies’ element” in archeology). Moreover, Kartsova came from the old Ukrainian family of Myklashevskys, which means she was a kozachka (female Cossack).
She was born on April 15 (28 old style), 1853 in Katerynoslav into a family of gubernia nobility – marshal Andrii Myklashevsky (1814–1905) and his wife Maria (born Nakovalnina). It seems to me that her mother also belonged to a noble Cossack family, as Nakovalnin is a variation on Nakovalnia, a Cossack family name.
It has been widely believed up to now that Kartsova spent her childhood in the manor of the Myklashevskys called Bilenke (now in Zaporizhia oblast on the bank of the Kakhovka Reservoir). I am inclined to think that she spent her childhood in Vorona (today’s Voronivka, in Synelnykove raion), where the family mansion of her mother is located. However, she would go to Bilenke, where her father introduced her to archaeological excavations, in order to visit her uncle Illia Myklashevsky. Nothing happens by chance: children take after their parents, and it was Andrii Myklashevsky who inspired his daughter in her search for antiques.
In spring of 1852, the archaeologist Oleksandr Tereshchenko (1806–65), who worked on archaeological sites in the gubernia, visited Katerynoslav. His work Narysy Novorosiiskoho Kraiu: Katerynoslav i Kherson (Sketches about Novorosiisk Land: Katerynoslav and Kherson) was first published in the chronicle (Ministry of People’s Education Magazine, 1853). A year later it was published as a separate book Narysy Novorosiiskoho Kraiu (Sketches about Novorosiisk Land) in Saint Petersburg. The author of the book was very excited about what he saw in the Potemkin palace in Katerynoslav – the Museum of Antiquity, as he called it. According to Tereshchenko’s estimates, Myklashevsky played an important role in the creation of the museum. He described him as the “diligent sponsor, providing not only money for the maintenance of the place, but also of antique objects, which were passed on from generation to generation.” Myklashevsky brought some golden segments of tombstone inscriptions as a gift, which came from his land in the town of Bilenke. This well-educated landlord had a great love for knowledge. He voluntarily started the excavations of kurgans, with their beautiful structures, wishing to make a contribution to Science. Those kurgans look as if they were from the same period as those in Gerros,” which was a burial place of Scythian kings,” mentioned by Herodotus.
In the winter time the Myklashevskys lived mainly in Katerynoslav, and sometimes in the Potemkin palace, which belonged to nobility back then. It was at the time when Kartsova’s father was the gubernia nobility leader. The children of the Myklashevsky family would go down to Dvorianskaia street (nowadays Dzerzhynskoho street), and go for a walk in the Potemkin Garden near the Dnieper River. They grew up together with the children of colonel Snarsky, general Kremer, official Cherniavsky, and others. As the member of Narodna Volia organization, Halyna Cherniavska-Bokhanovska, later said: “there was a French governess for each child from those families.”
According to the Malorossiisky Rodoslovnyk (Little Russian Family Reference Book), by Boris Modzalevsky, Anastasia Myklashevska married the nobleman, Guards’ cavalry captain Mykola Kartsov (born in 1849) in April, 1874. Her father-in-law was adjutant general Oleksandr Kartsov (1817–75), general of infantry and Kharkiv district commander since 1869.
Anastasia and Mykola had children. Their first son Oleksandr was born on November 15, 1875. Soon after that her young husband died and, judging from the documents about Kharkiv noblemen, Anastasia became a young widow in 1880.
There is no doubt that Kartsova got her passion for archeology from her father, who was also a passionate amateur. She spent a great deal of her free time in the Vorona neighborhood, in the hot Ukrainian steppe and tanned by the summer sun, she ruled over the peasants that she hired in the village. The peasants, whom Kartsova hired for excavations, thought of it as a new landlord’s whim, but later on would get excited about the works themselves. This is how Kovaliova and her colleague Rudenko presented the life of Kartsova.
In the spring of 1884 the young scholar Dmytro Yavornytsky accepted Myklashevky’s invitation and came to Vorona from Kharkiv. He worked there as archaeologist. After the excavations in May, Yavornytsky went back to Kharkiv. Afterwards Myklashevsky wrote to Yavornytsky that, after three weeks of excavations near Vorona, three graves were already dug out and many valuable things had been found. He also wrote that his daughter Anastasia was there all the time. After some time Myklashevsky told the historian that his daughter had the intention of continuing the excavation works under the “professional guidance of Yavornytsky.”
On May 24, 1884, Myklashevsky wrote to Yavornytsky that the excavations of the kurgans, which were part of the Yatsev group and led by his daughter, turned out to be successful, and that they had found many golden items. These were probably taken to Odesa, to show them to the archaeologists there. Yavornytsky went to an archaeological congress there, after which he gained widespread recognition.
Yavornytsky wrote in one of his books about Vorona: “After I examined a fortification I went straight to the home of the landlord Andrii Myklashevsky. I was warmly welcomed there. I decided to stay in Vorona as long as possible, intending to excavate a few kurgans. Moreover, I found a good assistant-worker there – Myklashevsky’s daughter Anastasia Kartsova, who was a passionate amateur of archeology.”
On July 6, 1884 Myklashevsky wrote to Yavornytsky that his daughter had finished her work on the excavations and was going to write a letter to the historian. Unfortunately, none of the letters that Kartsova wrote to him are preserved in the stocks of the Yavornytsky Dnipropetrovsk Historical Museum. However, nearly thirty letters which her father wrote to the scholar can be still found there. He had added in that letter: “She went to Kharkiv gubernia for a visit with her children.”
Kartsova’s father was getting older. While Myklashevsky was writing memoirs about his school mate Mikhail Lermontov in the fall of 1884, his daughter was restlessly working on the excavations of the kurgans nearby.
Somewhat later Myklashevsky wrote to the historian that it would be impossible to work on any excavations in the fall of 1884, as “the weather had been extremely bad all the time.” At the same time he highly valued his daughter as an archaeologist: “The contribution that my daughter made is very significant, as professor Samokvasov can attest to. I would be greatly disappointed if her work and expenses would not be properly acknowledged by the congress and no one would thank her. Thanks to Anastasia this remarkable area is emerging from darkness.”
On November 24, 1884, Myklashevsky would write to Yavornytsky: “I should have thanked you for the nice article you wrote, Woman in Archeology.” Yavornytsky met Kartsova and her father in 1884, the year he published the abovementioned article about her. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to find this article yet. It is not mentioned in the list of Yavornytsky’s works.
Myklashevsky, as was previously mentioned, corresponded with the famous Russian archaeologist Dmytro Samokvasov (1843–1911). Samokvasov, by the way, came from the Chernihiv region, which, in a sense, makes him the Myklashevsky’s countryman. When Myklashevsky wrote to him a letter on July 18, 1884, the archeologist was working on the excavation of kurgans near the village of Novohyrivka, Oleksandrivsk district, Katerynoslav gubernia. Myklashevsky discovered this through the press and then sent him a letter with an invitation to come to Vorona.
Myklashevsky, the tireless father, wrote a letter in June of the year that Yavornytsky worked with Anastasia, who had already excavated a few mounds from the so-called Yatsev group near the Lokhansky rapids (it is near the modern villages of Liubymivka and Dibrova on the Dnieper’s left bank). In that letter he wrote that “there had been no true amateurs of the country’s antiques until this year’s congress in Odesa, when one amateur of history (about whom you’ve probably heard from Yavornytsky), took it upon herself to illuminate a dark page of our history.”
Later Samokvasov would write in his book Mogily Russkoi Zemli (Graves of Russian Land): “Excavations carried out by A. Kartsova, D. Yavornytsky and myself showed that the cirques on kurgans are the signs of stealing from graves, which was done by digging up the mounds from above.” Samokvasov, as the very polite person that he was, put Kartsova’s name in first place and his own last. This may also be indicative of his esteem for Kartsova’s work.
After Samokvasov left Vorona Kartsova continued her excavations. At the end of the year “some amateur of history,” in her letter to Samokvasov, sent on December 9, 1884, from Vorona to Warsaw, gave a report about the items she was able to find: “I am terribly sorry to be so slow in responding to your last letter. I have been out in our sites pretty much all the time. Your letter got here when I was in Kharkiv on business. I have seen Yevarnytsky (Yavornytsky) there. Together we have checked all the notes (about the process of excavations). They are all safe, but everything is written down so poorly that it is hard to make anything out of it without looking at the numbers. I am sorry, this is my fault. The notes will be delivered to you, but perhaps not very soon. We are extremely sorry for being unpunctual. Yevarnytsky has been sick so often and is now getting ready for his master’s degree exam. Under such conditions, I cannot insist on working faster.”
Kartsova later replied to Samokvasov’s question, demonstrating her excitement and scholarly aptitude: “In what concerns the things you asked about, the flintknife we found in kurgan No.4 was lying totally aside the excavated place, approximately 112 inches from the hole in the subsoil layer. It was broken by a spade. We found nothing in the rest of that kurgan. Above the twigs laying there were: an iron axe, a spear, and bones of a bull and other animals. Yevarnytsky worked on that kurgan. The corner No.13 was dug out by peasants, on their land, which I later took control over. It was marked as No.13 because when Yevarnytsky was collecting the items we covered twelve graves. After that I carried out excavations without him. The osseous plates belong to the fourth of the Yatsev graves. Other pieces of bones with bas-reliefs on them also belong to the group. It all was a sahaidak (quiver), placed above the coffin and smashed by the soil. There was also an osseous handle of a dagger, fragments of a dagger, two spears, and a saddle device nearby.”
Here is how Kovaliova and Rudenko commented on that letter: “we find an unusual, for researchers of late 18th century, politeness in the description of observations of found objects and their connection with a burial. The level of generalizations discovered while carrying out the research, which help to differentiate old burials from nomad graves of the 13th and 14th centuries, can be found in the last phrase of the text. Most probably she is speaking about so-called kurgans – altars from Scythian times, which did not contain burial sites, and only served as a place for holding cult services. However, one should not rule out the possibility that the kurgans belong to the Bronze Age.”
At the end of her letter to the first-rate archeologist of that time, Kartsova wrote: “My ‘Long Grave’ is not finished yet. From what I can judge it belongs to the same type of kurgans as those excavated by Zabelin on the other side of the Dnieper. He found nothing in them. That comforts me. I am immensely thankful for your kind promise to send me your works. I am not sure if I have described the items you asked about in sufficient detail. I would be more than happy to give you additional explanations. With great respect, Kartsova.”
Kartsova’s father’s letters to Yavornytsky provide us with most information about her biography. Let us now go back to them. On March 6, 1885, Myklashevsky told Yavornytsky that his daughter was away from home: “She has devoted herself to archeology, subscribed to a lot of expensive French publications, and is studying the Stone Age.” From that letter we found out that, in December 1884, local peasants finally decided to open a school in Vorona and chose Kartsova to be its patron. From those letters it transpires that his daughter was very dear to him, shared his interest in archeology, and, unlike his son Mykhailo, is often mentioned in letters to Yavornytsky.
On May 22, 1885 Myklashevsky wrote to Yavornytsky that “yesterday Anastasia started excavating Sirykov graves in Vorona.” At the same time she was watching over the new school. Myklashevsky again invited Yavornytsky to come to Vorona for excavations and use his daughter’s sizable library: “You will find a big new collection of books on archeology.” Myklashevsky himself was busy with managing his estates.
In his letter to Yavornytsky from October 14, 1885, Myklashevsky wrote about another interest of his daughter: “This year our amateur has not been excavating. She became interested in building a new school. She built a wonderful building for the parish school, personally oversaw the construction process, and invested a lot of money into it. On October 6 this school was sanctified. It is one of the best schools in Novomoskovsk district. It already has over 60 students. The local community chose her to be the patron. At the ceremony of sanctification I gave a decent speech on the topic, about how knowledge is light, and ignorance is darkness.”
Yekaterinoslavskie Yeparkhialnye Vedomosti newspaper, from February 1, 1889, described the church parish school in Vorona as well furnished. This year the local school would celebrate its 125th anniversary. Honestly, I do not know if there is still a school in the today’s Voronivka – the village has fallen on hard times. There is a secondary school in the nearby village of Dibrova. This village celebrated its 100th anniversary this year. The idea of a parish school full of light in Voronivka appeared only because of a natural sensitivity of Kartsova, who sympathized with the “little people,” and their needs in the primitive conditions of village life at that time. Myklashevsky wrote to Yavornytsky that his daughter had not only built the school from her own money, but she also provided the school with books: “Peasants have passed a resolution to name the school after its patron — Anastasiivska.”
In 1887 Yavornytsky brought the famous collector and an art patron from Chernihiv, the owner of Kachanivka, Vasyl Tarnovsky (1837–99), to Vorona. His collection of Ukrainian antiques enabled the creation of the Chernihiv Historical Museum. Here is how Yavornytsky himself described this period in his letter to Borys Hrinchenko from Moscow on February 17, 1900: “I traveled with V. Tornovsky around Zaporizhia region in 1887. After I came back from Solovets Monastery, I went to visit Tarnovsky in his Kachanivka. During the summer of that same year, Tarnovsky and I went from the rapids of Kodak River, through all the other rapids, until the last Cossacks host on the Pidpilna River. I sailed on an oak (a boat hollowed out of a tree), while Tarnovsky went along the coast in a carriage with his famous valet Mark, the one Ilya Repin used for a parsuna (portrait) in his painting Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed. On this very route we took many photographs, too many to remember. I know only that we took one near the Bogatyr stone on the left bank of the Dnieper River in the Myklashevskys’ mansion Vorona. On the picture one can see: myself, Tarnovsky, the Myklashevskys, and the Kartsovs (Myklashevsky’s grandchildren).”
On July 14, 1889, Myklashevsky told Yavornytsky that his daughter bought a mansion in the Izium district, Kharkiv gubernia, and was going to leave for there in the fall of that year.
Records, published in Kharkiv in 1905 and 1906, show that the widow of cavalry captain Anastasia Kartsova owned a mansion of 2561 dessiatinas in the village of Komarivka, Tsareborysiv volost, Izium district of Kharkiv gubernia. Today Komarivka is a village, the village council center of Izium raion in Kharkiv oblast, 18 kilometers from Izium railway station. It is located near the Oskol River, more precisely on Chervony Oskol Reservoir – renamed from Tsareborysivka (Tsareborysiv) under the Bolshevik reign in 1919. The researcher from Kharkiv, Andrii Paramonov, wrote about the mansion in Komarivka in his book Starodavni Sadyby Iziumskoho Povity (Old Mansions of Izium District), which was published in Kharkiv in 2004. However, the story ends on the year of 1889 when Kartsova had just bought her mansion.
One can read in Istoria Mist i Sil Ukrainskoi RSR. Kharkivska Oblast (History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR. Kharkiv Oblast), published in Kyiv in 1976, that Komarivka was found in 1706 and that Soviet power was set up in the village in December of 1917, as if nothing significant happened between those two dates. However, we can also read that “settlements were found near Komarivka and Mykolaivka, as were two kurgan-type ancient burial grounds from the Bronze Age. Six burials of the Bronze Age and three nomad ones were found in four excavated kurgans. They also discovered a nomad stone statue from the 11th–13th centuries.”
Unfortunately, all information about the later years of our countrywoman Myklashevska-Kartsova vanished. However, a researcher from Kramatorsk Natalia Ovsiannikova recently discovered a description of Komarivka mansion in the 1890s in the Kharkiv archives. The name of Kartsova is very seldom mentioned in publications on Ukrainian archeology. Apparently, she did not deserve it. Samokvasov, to whom she wrote letters, mentioned the excavations of kurgans near Vorona which she carried out in his work, notably in Mogily Russkoi Zemli, that was published in Moscow in 1908.
Very few facts about the children of Myklashevska-Kartsova were preserved in a hand-written book about Katerynoslav nobility. Her son Oleksandr Kartsov was baptized in 1875, in the village of Rozdory, Solovianska volost of Pavlohrad district. There was no church in Vorona at that time (one was built only 15 years later), which is probably why the child was baptized in Rozdory. Today Vorona and Rozdory belong to one raion – Synelnykove raion. We can now imagine the chain of events. The Pavlovs owned Rozdory, which was the center of their land. The land of the Nakovalnins (which was the last name of Anastasia’s mother) mostly passed into the ownership of the Pavlovs, according to the information of Yakiv Novytsky. Was it by chance? It seems the Pavlovs became entwined with the Nakovalnins.
Kartsova’s son Oleksandr was first a captain of horse guards and artillery division in 1905, and then became an adjutant of the general inspector of artillery in 1910. A bit later he participated in World War I as a colonel. In 1920 he was mobilized to Baron Wrangel’s Army. He was shot by Red Army soldiers in the village of Bahriivka near Yalta, together with dozens of other people, on December 7, 1920. Today there is a chapel built on the site of the mass execution. There are plans to build a temple there.
We are indebted to Kartsova. As many people as possible have to know about our glorious compatriot from an old Ukrainian family and her contribution to Ukrainian archeology. A memorial plate on the Students’ Palace of Dnipropetrovsk National University should honor the first female archaeologist in Katerynoslav area, and one of the first in Ukraine. Thus it would be placed on the Potemkin Palace where she grew up, and where, thanks to efforts of her father, the first museum in the gubernia was opened.
