Spitsyn, Aleksandr

Spitsyn, Aleksandr Andreevich

 

Born Aug. 14 (26), 1858, in the city of Iaransk, in what is now Kirov Oblast; died Sept. 17, 1931, in Leningrad. Soviet Russian archaeologist. Corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1927).

Spitsyn began working for the Archaeological Commission in 1892 and the Russian Academy of the History of Material Culture in 1919. He studied, classified, and catalogued the antiquities of Russia, especially Bronze Age, Scythian-Sarmatian, Volga-Kama, and Slavic antiquities. Using the comparative-typological method, he dated many archaeological remains and correlated archaeological findings with extant annals. Spitsyn was one of the first in Russia to utilize the cartographic method.

REFERENCES

Passek, T. S., and B. A. Latynin. “K stoletiiu so dnia rozhdeniia A. A. Spitsyna.” Sovetskaia arkheologiia, 1958, no. 3.
Sovetskaia arkheologiia, issue 10. Moscow-Leningrad, 1948. (Contains a list of works by Spitsyn.)