From the History of the Studies of the “Cave Town” of Kachi-Kal’on in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

The “cave towns” are located atop of table mountains built of limestone, or in rocky limestone precipices, within a small section of the Inner Range of the Crimean Mountains in the south-western Crimea. Among a very few written sources on the history of mediaeval Crimea there are mostly narratives, so thorough archaeological study of the sites is essential. Only the analysis of the data obtained by archaeology will shed light on the history of the creation, development, and decline of these enigmatic cave structures. This paper addresses the history of the study of the “cave town” of Kachi-Kal’on. This site is located in the Bakhchisarai District (Republic of the Crimea). Although the travelogues from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century regularly mentioned Kachi-Kal’on, the first archaeological studies of the site were carried out only in 1930. The excavations were conducted at a small square on the promontory in front of the fourth grotto of Kachi-Kal’on, where fortifications of the fortress were allegedly located. The excavations were carried out by the Eski-Kermen Expedition of the State Academy of the History of the Material Culture under the supervision of N. I. Repnikov. In the early autumn 1933, the archaeological researches at Kachi-Kal’on continued by the same expedition. Apart from the investigations in the territory of the ancient town where the cultural layer was disturbed, a great work was done to study and describe the whole site. This paper analyses the circumstances of the said researches of the site and examines the results of these works. The origin and functional purpose of the “cave town” is still disputable. The paper is the first to publish the photographs from the collections of the Institute of the History of the Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences.