From the middle of the 19th century till today, as Olga Dyakova pointed out in the Far-Eastern Scientist newspaper, researchers have found more than 150 ancient settlements, fortifications, walls and ramparts in Primorye. The first written information about them, rather extensive, is contained in the sources of China. The southern neighbor collected every possible information about local fortresses and settlements, way of life, traditions, customs, number of inhabitants, front armies, etc. through ambassadors and spies, which was the basis for making reports, maps and news items. Thanks to their scrupulous translations, made in the second half of the 19th century by domestic orientalists, including Nikita Bichurin, corresponding member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences from 1828, we get to know about a ramified network of defensive constructions belonging to Tunguso-Manchurians (tribes of the Altai language macrofamily) living there in the 1st-early 2nd millennia.

The close attention to these old fortresses and cities, situated in strategically important points or on plots fit for farming, showed Russian trailblazers, who were sent there by the government to develop the Far-Eastern region and to engage in construction in the 1850s. Military experts and engineers began all-round studies of the territory. First of all, it is necessary to name the discoverer of local fortifications—Mikhail Venyukov, an army officer who arrived there in 1858 to specify the border with China and to describe the Priamurye lands. Devotion to his cause, inquisitiveness, responsibility and competence that he showed during an expedition from the Amur river to the Sea of Japan, deserve deep respect. And his book Travels to Priamurye, China and Japan became a result of his journey. At the same time, the mining engineer and geographer Innokenty Lopatin wrote a "report on 49 ancient natural boundaries in the Amur country" (nowadays it is kept at the Institute of Material Culture History, St. Petersburg), in which he described sites of ancient settlements of the 12th-13th centuries in the territory of present Ussuriisk and near it. Lopatin made first sketches and drawings of their architectural details. Later on, these fortifications were visited by Nikolai Przhevalsky, a well-known traveller, geographer, naturalist, writer, honorary member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences (from 1878), who supported Venyukov's hypothesis about the existence of ancient cities in Primorye.

The studies of the expedition of Archimandrite Pallady (Pyotr Kafarov), organized by the Russian Geographical Society in 1870-1872, have special significance. It was he who made an attempt to correlate the written data with the archaeological monuments, and left the first comprehensive description and ethno-cultural interpretation of the found artefacts. A considerable contribution to their studies was made by Ivan Nadarov. While revealing the aspects of development of the Far-Eastern territories in 1882-1883, he surveyed three sites of ancient settlements and an ancient road in the Barabashevka river valley.

In 1862, Fyodor Busse, appointed to the post of the ruler of the roving office of the military Governor of the Amur region, arrived in the Far East. Travelling about the territory entrusted to him, getting acquainted with the economy, agriculture, and the life of native people, he was the first to realize the problem of preservation of cultural heritage, in particular, ancient monuments. All their subsequent studies were carried out by the Society for Studies of the Amur territory, created in 1884 and headed by him.

Busse made up a full (for that time) list of archaeological objects—97 constructions, 20 of them—for defensive purposes. He opened and surveyed many sites of ancient set-

tlements, ancient roads of southern and southeastern Primorye, described in detail, made up diagrams of basic elements of fortifications—ramparts, trenches, gates. The construction of settlements he referred to the year 668—the time of origin of the Bohai state*. Their wide geography, revealed by the researcher, suggested the idea about the existence of the political association with the western border at the watershed of the Ussuri and Arsenyevka rivers.

A series of sites of ancient settlements was opened in the 1870s by Nikolai Palchevsky, who worked in the Primorye forestry. He informed about them the Society for Studies of the Amur territory. Moreover, his reports are the only remaining source of information about many of them, which were destroyed in the course of building the Rudnaya Pristan settlement.

* The Bohai state (698-926)—the first early-state formation in the territory of the Russian Far East. It included considerable territories of Manchuria, Primorye and North Korea.-Ed.

The invaluable contribution to the Far-Eastern archeology was made by Vladimir Arsenyev*, an army officer who arrived there in 1900. For 30 years he studied the geophysics, geography, ethnography, flora and fauna of the Ussuriisk territory, places of working of minerals. In 1906, on the instructions of the Russian Geographical Society he set off through Sikhote-Alin to St. Olga's Gulf and further on along the rivers running into it. He examined many fortifications and left their description, extremely valuable for us, as all of them are essentially damaged. A year later, he explored the central Sikhote-Alin, and in 1908-1910, he organized the most difficult expedition lasting for 19 months, devoted to the northern part of this highland. Studying the rivers flowing there, he found a member of fortresses and sites of ancient settlements, fixed approaches to them and the passes used as roads in ancient times.

A year later Arsenyev made a trip to the Ussuriisk taiga and concluded: "Monuments are quickly disappearing. It is necessary to hurry... No matter how bad the fortification plan is, it nevertheless is better, than nothing." It is not accidental that we know about the place and characteristics of a considerable quantity of constructions only from his diaries—some of them are badly damaged, others are difficult to find in the mountain-taiga thicket. Let us underline: this researcher made 12 expeditions to the Far East and 25 times crossed Sikhote-Alin, described, measured and made photos of 128 ancient monuments, many of them plotted on a map (besides, he was convinced that it was only a tenth part of the antiquities of the Ussuriisk territory). In 1916, he offered their classification in a report a the session of the Society of Russian orientalists: terrace-like fortifications-sites of ancient settlements; forts on hills and in valleys; ancient roads; long ramparts serving as borderlines.

In 1913-1916, in the Ussuriisk center of settlements and defensive constructions, a shool teacher Alexander Fyodorov carried out excavations, that helped find unique materials. On the basis of carefully performed works, he made up drawings of buildings, roads, made photos, and in 1918 he published the brochure About Ancient Monuments in Nikolsk- Ussuriisk and Its Environs, with a map of the examined territories.

Researchers of the 19th-early 20th centuries did not only describe a lot of archaeological monuments of the Far East, but also designated the basic problems on which specialists are working even today: cultural and ethnic problems, date, time, construction purpose, topography, classification of sites of ancient settlements, fortifications; roads, means of communication between them; origin of building traditions.

O. Dyakova, From Bichurin to Okladnikov. Discoverers and researchers of the sites of ancient settlements and fortresses of the central Sikhote-Alin. The "Far-Eastern Scientist" newspaper, No. 5, March 10, 2010

Prepared by Olga BAZANOVA

* See: V. Yessakov, V. Markin, "Dedicated to the Far East", Science in Russia, No. 4, 2000.-Ed.