Any account of the Mal’ta site that gives credit where credit is due must spend a moment with Mikhail Gerasimov, the archaeologist who began its systematic excavation.

Gerasimov was born in 1907 and began excavating the Mal’ta site in 1927, when he was twenty years old.

The excavation was part of his early archaeological career, and the richness of what the site produced — the figurines, the burial, the elaborate material culture — was central to his professional development and his understanding of what Upper Paleolithic cultures were capable of.

Gerasimov went on to become one of the most accomplished archaeologists of the Soviet era, known particularly for his development of the method of facial reconstruction from skeletal remains — the process of rebuilding the appearance of an individual from the structure of their skull and facial bones.