In early May 2017, not far from Panticapaeum, on the territory of modern Kerch, archaeologists from the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences began, according to the statements of the archaeologists themselves, rescue archaeological excavations of the Hospital mound. At the same time, Russian builders were preparing to start work on the arrangement of automobile approaches - the road to the Crimean bridge under construction then. It was announced that the Hospitalny mound falls into the construction zone and will be destroyed as a result of the construction of the highway. Hospital mound is named because it is located near the hospital complex built in the last century. In the top view, the mound is marked with a red circle.
This view reflects the situation with the mound for July 2020. The road in the lower right corner with a truck on it is a built auto approach to the Crimean bridge. And from the mound to this highway in a straight line at least 200 meters. But, let's not get ahead of ourselves, let's set out the whole story in order.
This is how the mound looked shortly before the "salvation".
Here it is to the right of the road, in front of the white two-story hospital building.
Now, let's see how the "rescue" excavations themselves went. What technology did the wise academics use? But what - the bulldozers drove in and let's cut the mound in large chunks under the base. What the next video tells about the first 46 seconds.
Promotional video:
Here are some more photos of the technology of saving the mound from the famous adepts of archeology.
But either the bulldozers did not fully cope with the task, or the AI RAS employees were eager to save the mound as soon as possible, for which they used another high-precision archaeological tool - excavators.
And so that the local natives did not drag something away when the rescuers were resting from work, they put up such a stand, made in harsh field conditions. And for especially daring aborigines, the terms of responsibility were also highlighted in red.
We would like to draw the attention of readers to the name of the customer on this stand and how the name of the object is written, within the framework of which the valiant archaeologists cleaned the entire mound to the ground.
Conspiracy theorists, for example, know that according to certain canons, before realizing their plans, various secret societies are obliged to publicly warn everyone about them.
The following photo shows the result of the careful rescue of the mound with excavators.
True, there are still a few stones that either did not fit into the excavator's bucket, or the academics have not yet figured out where to stick them in the reconstructed "dromas", or maybe they turned out to be completely superfluous.
As one would expect, after the rescue operation, scientists stated that the mound was just an ancient crypt and nothing was really found in it - except for fragments of dishes and the remains of a wooden sarcophagus. Allegedly, the ancient robbers are to blame for everything, who, back in time immemorial, dug the mound up and down. And after the robbers, the inhabitants of the mythical Middle Ages, who made a dwelling in themselves in the crypt, were still to blame. And instead of the expected "Greek" frescoes, rescuers from archeology found such "petroglyphs".
Why the ancestors actually arranged the mounds is the topic of a separate article. Archaeologists, not finding the remains of the buried there, which the ancient robbers also apparently dragged away with them, to make their version more convincing, “unearthed” a couple of “ancient graves” in the form of stone boxes next to the crypt and told the story of how on the original burial mound with a crypt, a second mound was poured over these graves. True, they forgot to explain why the graves were below the level of the crypt. Here is a video of the renowned leader of a team of valiant archaeologists talking about the meticulous method of research and subsequent conservation of the mound.
After the ancient mound was dug under a clean one and many media outlets happily reported that archaeologists had investigated the largest mound in the last 120 years, it suddenly turned out that, either an error crept into the calculations of the builders, or for some other reason, the road of the automobile approach does not touch its territory, and will pass more than 200 meters away from it. And we must pay tribute to the zealous employees of the AI RAS, they decided to restore the Hospital Barrow. For this purpose, excavators and bulldozers raked up a heap of earth and, for greater persuasiveness, sprinkled it with crushed "extra" stones from the "crypt dromos". And that's what they did.
For clarity, we present 2 more photos from approximately the same angle - it was and it is.
As we can see, archeology as a science is progressing - and its experienced adepts have new methods and tools for research, salvation and reconstruction of ancient monuments. Of course, we do not know what, where and when the renowned archaeologists will still want to save, but we can assume that at the next rescue operation, the AI RAS employees may well use open-pit rotary excavators, and maybe even a tactical nuclear charge.