Okladnikov, Aleksei Pavlovich

Born Sept. 20 (Oct. 3), 1908, in the village of Konstantinovshchina, present-day Zhigalovo Raion, Irkutsk Oblast. Soviet archaeologist, historian, and ethnologist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1968; corresponding member, 1964). Honored Scientist of the Yakut ASSR (1956), the RSFSR (1957), and the Buriat ASSR (1968). Member of the CPSU since 1946.

From 1938 to 1961, Okladnikov worked in the Leningrad Division of the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (AN SSSR). In 1961 he became head of the department of humanities research of the Institute of Economics of the Siberian Division of the AN SSSR. In 1966, Okladnikov was appointed director of the Institute of History, Philology, and Philosophy of the Siberian Division. In 1962 he was made a professor and head of the subdepartment of history at the University of Novosibirsk.

Okladnikov did field work in Siberia, the Far East, Middle Asia, and the Mongolian People’s Republic. He discovered and studied the remains of Neanderthal man and his culture in the Teshik-Tash grotto in Uzbekistan; the Paleolithic culture in the Mongolian People’s Republic; and primitive petroglyphs along the Lena and Angara rivers, in the Amur region, and in Mongolia. He discovered many local Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures, as well as Bronze and Iron Age cultures in Siberia and the Far East. In 1945, Okladnikov investigated the remains of a 17th-century expedition of Russian polar seafarers on Faddei Island (off the northeastern coast of the Taimyr Peninsula).

Okladnikov is the author of general studies on the history of primitive society and culture, Paleolithic and Neolithic art, and the history of Siberia, the Far East, and the Far North from ancient times to the 18th century. He received the State Prize of the USSR in 1950 and 1973. He was awarded the Order of Lenin, three other orders, and a number of medals.