Yaroslav Chentsov: "Decolonized knowledge of one's own history is the best defense against imperial narratives"

For centuries, Russian and Soviet historiography has promoted the narrative that southern Ukraine was a civilizational void, a wasteland where culture only emerged with the arrival of the empire. The new project “Crimea Beyond Empires,” using modern 3D technologies, proves the opposite, turning digitized artifacts into weapons in the cultural war. We discuss the flaws in Soviet methodology that modern scholars must correct, why the term “Mongol-Tatars” is an ideological anachronism, and a scientific sensation at the Odesa Archaeological Museum with Yaroslav Chentsov, PhD, an archaeologist, specialist in the protection and preservation of Ukraine’s cultural heritage, member of the NGO “Arhaika,” and author of a dissertation dedicated to the nomads of steppe Ukraine during the era of the Ulus of Jochi (the Golden Horde).

Tell us about the “Crimea Beyond Empires” project. How did the idea arise to use the collections of the Odesa Archaeological Museum to save Crimean heritage, given that most of the peninsula’s material culture is currently under occupation?

The project came about thanks to and with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. I won a grant program, which made it possible to bring this idea to life.

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SCREENSHOT: YouTube Intenta

The idea itself came about because, as a researcher, I actively collaborate with the Odesa Archaeological Museum and know that it houses many artifacts originating specifically from Crimea. Since I am a member of the NGO “Arhaika,” which is dedicated to preserving Ukraine’s cultural heritage, this project represents a convergence of my academic interests (I study the Middle Ages in the Ukrainian region) and my work in heritage preservation. Crimean heritage fits these objectives 100 percent.

Fifty key artifacts from the medieval and early modern periods of Crimea were selected for digitization. What were the selection criteria, and are there any exhibits among them that you consider to be true gems of the collection?

The selection criteria were, first, the accessibility and representativeness of the objects, and second, their uniqueness. Although in some cases we followed the opposite principle, creating a representative sample. This applies to the collection of so-called smoking pipes. We selected 15 pieces. They’re all more or less similar to one another, but this was done intentionally to demonstrate a characteristic cross-section of this material. As far as I know, this material has not yet been presented in Ukraine in the form of 3D models.

Of course, there are also unique items. For example, there are building slabs from the Soldaya Fortress —a Genoese fortress near the modern city of Sudak in Crimea. The names of Genoese consuls are carved on them, and they date back to 1404 and 1414. The inscriptions state that “such-and-such a consul currently rules in Soldaya” and that this slab was installed specifically during his tenure. Thanks to this, we can trace the stages of the fortress’s construction. This is unique material, especially for the unoccupied part of Ukraine.

The project emphasizes that the scientific analysis of the artifacts was conducted through the lens of a decolonial approach. How exactly will a virtual presentation of these objects help debunk Russian and Soviet imperial myths about the history of Crimea?

At the very least, the virtual exhibition will help ordinary citizens understand that these artifacts even exist. It seems to me that most people who are not scholars, historians, or archaeologists lack a deep understanding of what took place in Crimea during the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Instead, Russian imperial or Soviet myths continue to circulate in society.

The Russian narrative has always revolved around the idea of “bought and sold” or that Crimea “has always belonged to the Russians.” To deepen our understanding of the complex ethnic and political processes that took place in this region, we need to examine the material culture left behind here. By comparing the description with the artifact itself, people begin to realize that everything is much more complex and rich than the Russian imperial narrative attempts to portray.

In general, when it comes to Soviet historiography, it promoted the myth of a sort of “lacuna,” a void, where supposedly no one lived for a hundred years in the territories of Bessarabia or the Black Sea region. It is simply impossible to imagine that vast territories, which had previously been actively settled by both nomadic and sedentary peoples, were suddenly desolate for a century. The narrative goes: “The Mongols came, killed everyone, and began living here on their own.”

In reality, things were quite different. The number of Mongols was minimal; they consisted exclusively of the ruling elite. What actually took place was a large-scale mixing of peoples. Soviet ideology painted a simplified picture: “Here are the Mongols, here are the Tatars. And who are the Tatars? They’re the Crimean Tatars, and there are some Tatars in Kazan too… They’re all infidels and bad people.” In accordance with the party line, the history of the Crimean Tatars and any mention of them were simply erased from textbooks and museum exhibits.

If Ukrainians fully come to terms with this legacy, the myth that the Russians came and brought culture here will disappear. Some of the artifacts in our project represent the authentic culture of the Crimean Tatars.

A bit about the technical side. The 3D models were created using photogrammetry and are already publicly available on the Sketchfab platform. Let’s try to explain to people who know nothing at all about photogrammetry or Sketchfab: what is it, and how do you use it?

Sketchfab is an open online platform. Access to it is completely free for anyone with an internet connection and a smartphone or laptop. The Odessa Archaeological Museum has had a page on this platform for several years now, where models from various projects are published. Our latest project is posted there in the “Collections” tab under the title “Crimea Beyond Empires.” All 50 artifacts are featured there. By the way, they’re also published in the Register of the Museum Fund of Ukraine, which is also freely accessible.

Now, regarding the creation of models. To put it simply, photogrammetry is the process of creating a 3D model based on photographs of a real object. To obtain a high-quality model, the object must be photographed from absolutely every possible angle. There are some technical nuances here: the object’s size, its color, its tendency to reflect light, and so on. Generally, between 100 and 1,000 photos are taken per object.

Per model?

Yes, for a single model. There have even been cases where as many as 3,000 photos were taken, but on average, it comes out to about 100–120 photos. These images are then processed using specialized software, which stitches the flat photos together into a three-dimensional 3D model.

An extremely important aspect that isn’t visible during a regular viewing on the website: detailed metric dimensions were recorded for each model. Specialized software allows us to record parameters with an accuracy of hundredths of a millimeter. If a researcher wants to study these objects in detail tomorrow, they’ll be able to take all the necessary measurements remotely. We’ve also included this data in the description of each artifact.

Among these 50 exhibits is an Iranian hookah. Literally only a handful of such artifacts have survived worldwide. As I understand it, you even managed to identify its probable maker or workshop?

Yes, it’s truly a unique example. I think I’ll write a separate scholarly article about it later. In the collections of the Odesa Archaeological Museum, this object was stored without any attribution whatsoever. No one even knew which period it belonged to.

Generally speaking, the word “khuka” means a small box. It is small, made of copper, hemispherical, and has a lid. It bears Arabic inscriptions that translate as “sultan” and “assistant”; these two words are intertwined. The entire artifact is decorated with floral ornamentation.

Other Iranian artifacts from that period or later feature hatching (for example, it appears on an Iranian jug also held in our collection). However, this huka lacks hatching. The absence of hatching, the fine floral ornamentation, and its interweaving with Arabic letters allowed me to draw parallels. I have concluded that the item dates to the second half of the 15th century, originates from the city of Khorasan, and belongs to the workshop of Shiroli ibn Dimashqi. We cannot say with 100% certainty that this is the work of the master himself, but we can definitely say it comes from his workshop and reflects his production tradition. Only seven such items are known to exist in the world, and our find will be the eighth. Of course, this is open to debate, but I believe I have found sufficient evidence. This is a classic example of archaeologists working as detectives of the past.

We cannot trace Mongolian religious identity in our region based on archaeological sources. But what about ethnic markers? For example, the specific Mongolian women’s headdress known as the “boka.” Is it attested in Ukraine?

Yes, the boka is a distinctive headdress. And it is precisely through this that we can clearly trace the presence of the Mongol ethnic group. It is unlikely that any Polovtsian woman would have worn it, and, in fact, no one would have allowed her to do so. In eastern Ukraine—in the Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions—there are burials containing these boka, which we use to indicate a Mongol presence. They are not found in other burials.

This brings us to the question of the ethnic composition of the population at that time. As we mentioned earlier, the number of Mongols was minimal—consisting solely of the ruling elite and a certain number of warriors who came here to wage war. But later, they either returned to their homelands or assimilated into the local population. Overall, most of the territory remained under the control of the ethnic groups that had lived there before the invasion. These were predominantly the Polovtsians, who at that time occupied most of the Ukrainian steppe.

So, was the “boka” in our region not just an ethnic influence, but a status symbol?

Quite the opposite. From the very beginning of its emergence in its homeland, it was a marker of high status. But once in Ukraine, it became an ethnic element—a marker that allowed people of a different, Mongolian, origin to be visually distinguished.

It is known that one of the reviewers during the defense of your dissertation advised you to abandon the term “Mongol-Tatars.” Explain why this is a clear historical anachronism and a purely ideological construct of Soviet historiography?

To put it simply, this term artificially lumps together completely different people. In reality, these are peoples who are entirely distinct in terms of origin and anthropology. There are Mongols, and there are Tatars —these are separate groups.

In your dissertation, you use the term “distorted identities.” What do you mean by this concept? How is this related to researchers’ incorrect interpretation of historical materials in the past? What are the main flaws in Soviet methodology that you’ve had to correct?

Distortions come in various forms. Sometimes there is outright ideological distortion in line with the party’s agenda. For example, in the Soviet Union, any German influences on the Chernyakhov culture were aggressively denied or glossed over.

In the case of the nomads of the South, there was no direct ideological directive. Here, we’re talking more about outdated methods of analysis and a simply careless, sloppy approach to the material. Soviet archaeologists in this region were primarily interested in the Scythians, the Sarmatians, and the ancient Greeks. Medieval nomads, on the other hand, were studied only on a residual basis. As for the Nogais, they were of no use whatsoever, because, in accordance with Islamic tradition, they were buried without grave goods. When a single burial mound contained as many as 180 skeletons without grave goods, Soviet scholars treated the documentation of such material very superficially.

That is precisely why I speak of “distortions”: the material was documented poorly, and confusion reigned in the reports. It often happened that a burial was described in a report, but the actual material was missing from the archives. Or, conversely, an artifact exists, but it’s impossible to determine which burial it came from. This was particularly common among the large-scale Soviet “new construction” expeditions of the 1970s–1990s.

Explain to readers what a “new construction expedition” is.

In the Soviet Union, large-scale irrigation and land reclamation systems for agriculture were built on a massive scale. This required digging up vast tracts of land. According to the rules at the time, the land had to be surveyed by archaeologists before construction began.

The state allocated substantial funds and equipment, and massive expeditions were formed, consisting of dozens of teams and employing hundreds of people. They traveled to these sites and excavated enormous volumes of material, mostly using heavy machinery to level the burial mounds. Today in Ukraine, archaeologists are strictly prohibited from excavating a burial mound unless it is threatened with complete physical destruction. Back then, things were much simpler.

As a result, about 90% of all the archaeological material on nomads that we have today comes precisely from those large-scale Soviet excavations. But due to the rush and the sheer volume of work, the quality of data recording suffered greatly.

You link the relevance of research on the nomadic populations of our steppe to changes in the perception of historical and cultural heritage stemming from the Russian-Ukrainian war. This connection isn’t obvious to everyone. How exactly does a deep understanding of this complex past help us today?

It helps us on many levels. If Ukrainians come to understand their heritage in its entirety—rather than defining themselves exclusively as “descendants of Kievan Rus’” or “descendants of the Trypillians” (which is, in fact, a very widespread but scientifically incorrect myth), our perception of the country will change.

We must soberly acknowledge: across the vast territory of modern Ukraine, in our steppes, nomadic peoples of Turkic origin lived for centuries. They were not Slavs. We have had an extraordinarily complex and rich history of interaction between the Slavic and Turkic worlds. Add to this Crimea, the Italian trading cities of the Genoese, Armenian and Greek communities—you name it, they were all here. A deep, decolonized understanding of our own history is the best defense against any imperial narratives that Russia is trying to impose on the world—and on us—today.

Валерій Болган