They survive because the burial context, sealed under a stone slab and preserved in cold Siberian earth, was favorable to their preservation.

And they survive because the archaeologists who excavated them, beginning with Mikhail Gerasimov in the late 1920s, understood the importance of what they were finding and worked to preserve it.

The collections are, in this sense, the product of multiple acts of care: the care of the people who made the objects, the care of the people who placed them in the burial, and the care of the researchers who excavated and studied them.

The Legacy Of Mikhail Gerasimov