Artamonov was born into a peasant family in
Tver Governorate. He moved to
Saint Petersburg when he was nine years old to pursue secondary education, including studying painting under
Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and art history under
Nikolai Sychov, as well as archaeology. He was an active participant in the
Russian Revolution. Artamonov's scholarly career was centered on
Leningrad University, where he taught from 1928, He researched
Bronze Age and
Iron Age settlements by the
Don River, in the
North Caucasus and in
Ukraine. He excavated a great number of
Scythian and Khazar
kurgans and settlements (most famously, the Khazar fortress of
Sarkel, which he discovered during the first excavation he arranged in 1929), and published a hefty monograph (
Istoriya Khazar) on the
Khazars in 1962. Early editions of this work (1937, 1939), which emphasized the enormous influence of the Khazars on the development of the early
Rus' and other peoples, were denounced by Soviet authorities, compelling him to add a conclusion to his work stating essentially that they had in fact had no lasting influence. In 1939, he was appointed Director of the
Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union's Institute of the History of Material Culture in accordance with the wishes of the institute's staff, after they rebelled against Artamonov's predecessor,
Joseph Orbeli, who had sacked many of its leading members - an about-face by the authorities which was unprecedented during
Stalin's rule. Under his leadership the Institute launched a number of periodicals, including
Sovetskaya arkheologiya,
Brief Reports of the IHMC and
Materials and Research on the Archaeology of the USSR, and also established a branch in
Moscow. Artamonov was appointed director of the
Hermitage Museum in 1951. Thirteen years later, he was ousted from office due to resisting interference from
Communist Party officials in his running of the Museum, especially regarding his refusal to remove paintings by the French
Impressionists - described by the government as "bourgeois decadents" - from display. Artamonov was awarded the
Order of Lenin, the
Order of the Red Banner of Labour and various medals. His many disciples include
Lev Gumilyov,
Anatoly Kirpichnikov,
Dmitry Machinsky, and
Igor Dubov. Among the students he trained were
Svetlana Pletnyova and
Leo Klejn. He died in 1972, whilst at his desk editing a scientific article. ==See also==