L. Nauka Publishing House. 1976. 191 pages. The print run is 3,450. Price 79 kopecks.

A characteristic feature of Soviet archaeology, which was defined at the beginning of its formation, is the recognition of its historical science, based on the principles of historical materialism. It was Soviet archaeologists in the late 1920s-1930s who were the first in world archaeology to pay close attention to the study of the economy and social structure of ancient societies and conducted extensive research on this topic. This was a qualitatively new stage in the development of archaeology. It is necessary to keep this in mind, since now a broad front is being developed on the issues of economic activity of ancient tribes, their social organization, mainly in the Anglo-American literature. This direction has been declared the "new archeology of the 60s" and almost the "revolution in archeology". It is significant not only the priority of Soviet archaeology in these matters, but also its direct and indirect influence on the very appeal of the "new archaeologists" to socio-economic problems. While criticizing" traditional archaeology " for its history of things, modern American proponents of the new direction largely repeat the heated discussions that were held on this topic in our country during the formation of Soviet archaeology.

The development of relevant topics in Soviet archaeology continues, although there was a tendency to some straightforward simplification, the use of some kind of templates. Therefore, it is very timely to publish a book by V. M. Masson, Doctor of Historical Sciences, senior researcher at the Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Archeology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which specifically summarizes the experience of relevant research by Soviet archaeologists. This work is both very important and very relevant. Of course, it does not exhaust all the topics and all that Soviet researchers have accumulated in this area. It should be noted, in particular, that the experience of economic and social reconstructions carried out by Siberian - Vedic archaeologists could be presented in V. M. Masson's book more fully and comprehensively.

In the book, the issues of studying various types of material production and restoration of ancient social systems on the basis of archaeological data are consistently considered in special sections. The author relies primarily on the well-known materials of Central Asia and the Middle East, where his personal developments have been widely recognized in Russian and world science in covering ancient economic and social processes .1 At the same time, it attracts quite widely materials from other regions, especially for the Paleolithic era. Rich in factual material and an extensive bibliography, the book is at the same time a valuable reference. But it is especially important to consistently apply the principle of historicism to archeology as a science that examines the past of humanity, and not just dead things enclosed in typological series, more or less skillfully constructed and camouflaged by mathematical apparatus. V. M. Massov puts forward the close connection between archeology and historical science as a starting point already in the first chapter, pointing out that the subject of archeology is the study of the laws of development of objects of material culture and various structures of human society that are reflected in these objects (p.11). It is possible to expand and supplement such a definition, but it clearly indicates the historical, humanitarian nature of archeology. This definition of the subject of archaeology, previously proposed by V. M. Masson in the press, was positively evaluated by philosophers in this respect2 .

The second chapter, one of the most significant in the book, is called "Food extraction and production". Here, on the basis of archaeological materials, such types of economy as hunting, agriculture, and cattle breeding are considered. Unfortunately, only a cursory mention is made of fishing (p.

1 Thus, the evolution of residential buildings in relation to social development, proposed by V. M. Masson on the basis of materials from South Turkmenistan, is fully described in the new edition of the Cambridge Ancient History.

2 V. N. Boryaz. Methodological prerequisites and principles for determining the object of archaeological science. "Materialist dialectics and private sciences", L. 1976, p. 185.

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33), in the study of which the Soviet archeology has accumulated considerable experience. The author clearly follows the principle of identifying the actual basis for the restoration of certain economic systems, which he considers as consisting of the object of exploitation, tools, the natural environment and the person himself with his intellectual and professional potential (p. 21). In order to reconstruct the forms of economic activity, analogies (or, as it is now often accepted to say, "models" based on ethnographic data) are used. At the same time, it is very important to determine the conditions for using ethnographic parallels, which are often used excessively widely in archeology. V. M. Massov considers it necessary first of all to establish whether the compared societies belong to the same cultural and economic type (pp. 17-18). Quantitative calculations of the hunting area in the Upper Paleolithic era, based on the paleoeconomical estimates proposed by S. N. Bibikov, are interesting. The system of graphical analysis of different herd composition (p. 35-38) clearly illustrates the formation of individual types of cattle breeding and their evolutionary development. Especially successful is the restoration of ancient agricultural systems based on the use of data on three types of sources-the object of exploitation, tools and the natural environment (p. 48-56). This research procedure makes it possible to remove the widespread conclusions about agriculture in the literature, made for one specific type of source, for example, for tools, and sometimes for one grain grater. In general, this chapter marks a solid beginning for the fundamental development of the problem of restoring ancient economic systems based on archaeological data.

In the third chapter, V. M. Masson addresses the study of ancient crafts and crafts, pointing out that it is necessary to proceed from the establishment of the degree of professionalism, which is reflected in technology, from the territorial analysis of the placement of traces of production in the settlement and the distribution of manufactured products by exchange or trade (p.59). It is valuable that the development of production is considered in the book from the earliest times to the formation of class society. In the final sections, the author uses data from written sources on the Ancient East. At the same time, I would like to note two important points. First of all, the decentralized nature of domestic production, starting from the Upper Paleolithic to the early agricultural settlement of Jeytun, carefully studied by the author. He also revealed a picture of still deeply archaic production, when there were no socio-economic prerequisites for the allocation of craft. The second is the isolation of a special type of communal craft, which is already professional in terms of technology, but still completely primitive in terms of social organization, when professional craftsmen worked not to sell, but to meet the needs of their community precisely by virtue of membership in it (p.63). A theoretical description of such a craft is given by F. Engels wrote, referring to the so-called Stone Age workshops, that "the masters who developed their art here probably worked at the expense and for the benefit of the entire collective." 3 New archaeological discoveries, especially on the flourishing industries of the early agricultural era, fully confirm this characteristic (pp. 63-65).

Chapter four, "Exchange, Trade, and Primitive Money,"is very interesting both from the point of view of archaeology and political economy. Here, as in the previous sections, the methodology of studying these phenomena based on the materials of archeology is presented and, based on this, a general outline is proposed. For the history of primitive society, the concept of cultural traditionalism is very important as one of the factors that lead to the development of exchange (pp. 78-80) and fundamentally distinguish this society of deep archaism from more developed structures. In this connection, V. M. Massey notes that there is no reason to modernize the phenomena of ancient trade, even if it is systematic, and to distinguish the class of merchants in the primitive era, as is the case in some works of G. Child (p. 89). Therefore, the concept of "primitive money" is very important, which V. M. Massov develops in detail after V. I. Ravdonikas, emphasizing their fundamental difference from the money of class societies, and the features of purely morphological specificity that are very important for archeology.-

3 K. Marx and F. Engels, Op. 21, p. 160.

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reducing items that become a means of circulation to miniaturized or gigantic dimensions that undermine their consumer value (pp. 80-85).

Further, the book examines two main types of archaeological sources that allow us to judge the social structure of ancient tribes and peoples: dwellings and settlements (Chapter 6 - "The layout of dwellings and questions of social evolution"; Chapter 7 - "From hunting camps to ancient cities") and ancient burials and burial grounds (Chapter 8 - "Funerary sites"). rites and social stratification of ancient societies"). Here, as in other cases, the author correctly and clearly defines the methodology. In this connection, we note the concept of "settlement", which is successfully proposed in the book, based on the relevant developments of the prominent Soviet Paleolithic researcher A. N. Rogachev (pp. 127-128). V. M. Massov makes extensive use of his research on the evolution of ancient dwellings and settlements and the composition of ancient cities, which he conducted in Southern Turkmenistan. Describing ancient settlements and groups of settlements, the author uses the terms "system" and "macrosystem", which may require further justification (p. 118- 122, 142 - 146)4 .

An important chapter is devoted to the study of burial grounds as sociological sources. In this area, Soviet archaeology has an undisputed priority and the corresponding specific developments, which the author successfully and systematically summarizes. Here, the definition of the indirect nature of relevant information introduced by V. M. Massov and the obligatory consideration of ideological ideas that have a decisive impact on the funeral rite and can delay or distort data on the social structure are particularly significant (pp. 149-150).

Of course, with such a truly global coverage of the topic "economy and social structure of ancient societies" - in territorial terms - from North Asia to the Two Rivers and America, in chronological terms - from Acheulis to the XIX-XX centuries, significant gaps are inevitable in the coverage of the material and in the coverage of many important problems. For example, the working hypothesis of the "natural layout", as shown by the discussion in "Soviet Ethnography", does not exhaust all the possibilities of interpreting Paleolithic art monuments and requires further justification. And in general, primitive art as a whole as a source for the sociology of primitive society is given too little space in the book compared to its significance in the life of ancient man. The same applies to religion. In fact, the role of labor in the development of a person and society has been left out of the discussion.

Among the minor but significant observations, we can point out that there is no information about the absolute predominance of bone remains of mountain goats and Siberian ibex in the Mousterian Teshik-Tash grotto in the part of the book that deals with selective hunting in the Paleolithic. This fact, perhaps, most clearly demonstrates not only the technical capabilities of Neanderthal hunters, but also the strength of the social ties that held their communities together. It would be very important to use in this regard such facts of cardinal importance as the discovery of the "first flower people" in Shanidar and the remains of a Neanderthal man with an amputated arm during his lifetime. The author rightly criticizes the "new archeology".

In general, this is a valuable work that has significantly expanded our understanding of archaeological sources and their reconstructive capabilities, summarizing the accumulated experience, and demonstrating the new capabilities of archeology as a Marxist historical science.

4 V. M. Masson. Jeytun settlement. The problem of developing a productive economy. MIA, 1971, N 180.

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