Ravdonikas V.I. (1894-1976), archaeologist

Categories / Science. Education/Personalia
RAVDONIKAS Vladislav Iosifovich (1894-1976, Leningrad), archaeologist, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR from 1946. He was interested in archaeology from the mid-1910s and dug in Tikhvinsky Uyezd (District), Novgorod Province. A student of the Mikhailovsky Artillery School in 1916-17, he participated in World War I. He then studied intermittently at the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Petrograd University in 1918-23. He became a member of the Institute for the History of Material Culture in 1928 and the head of the institute's local branch in 1944-45 and 1946-49. He was the head of the chair of archaeology at Leningrad State University in 1936-48. He wrote works on the history of north-western Russia in Antiquity and the Middle Ages including the settlement of Baltic and Finnish tribes and state formation in the region, as well as theoretical problems of primitive society. In 1930s, he explored a burial ground on Oleny Island, Karelia, studied petroglyphs at Lake Onega and the White Sea and medieval barrows near Lake Ladoga, and excavated in Staraya Ladoga. He withdrew from research in the late 1940s. Buried at Komarovskoe Cemetery.

Reference: Савинов Д. Г. Предисловие // Памятники древнего и средневекового искусства: Сб. ст. в память проф. В. И. Равдоникаса. СПб., 1994. С. 5-13.

A. Y. Chistyakov. Ravdonikas Vladislav Iosifovich
Савинов Д. Г. Предисловие // Памятники древнего и средневекового искусства: Сб. ст. в память проф. В. И. Равдоникаса. СПб., 1994 Russian Academy of Sciences
Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy
State University, St. Petersburg
Institute for the History of Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Komorovskoe Cemetery