The Ethnographic Department of Tsarskoselskii Arsenal and Its Collections (Unknown Pages of the Ethnographic Science in Russia)

Abstract

The article examines the history of the Ethnographic Department of Tsarskoselskii Arsenal and the formation of its collections. The interest in this question arose in connection with the fact that, in 1907, the Ethnographic Department of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg had received a rather large collection which was referred to in documents as “ethnographic collections, i.e., weapons and various items of the peoples inhabiting the islands and shores of the Pacific”, and which included objects that had been found in the North and South Americas, Oceania, the Far East, as well as the Central Asia, Siberia, and Africa.