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• 1 2019-03-27T04:36:32-04:00 The Academy digs deeper 1 plain 2019-03-27T05:43:41-04:00 01/01/1837 In 1837 the Academy of Sciences, at the behest Count Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov (the governor-general of Novorossia and Bessarabia), published a volume called "On the Antiquities of the Southern Coast of Crimea and the Tauride Mountains." The author, a man named Peter Keppen, dedicated his work - which he described as the "weak fruit of decades of research" - to the Romanov heir, Alexander Nikolaevich, who was himself about to make his first journey to Crimea.
  
  Keppen had traveled through Crimea in 1819 and settled there permanently in 1827. In 1833 Vorontsov provided him with "the means to compose an archaeographical and topographical study" of southern Crimea: the 1837 publication was to be the first installment of this work. In it he documents the ruins of churches, Greek and Armenian inscriptions, and Greek, Karaim, and Tatar tombs. But the lion's share of pages are devoted to the ruins of fortifications - to the (Greek and Genoese) fortifications that proved that "the inhabitants of the Tauride mountains took every measure to protect themselves from the peoples of the steppe." “From the northern side," he wrote, "at every gorge/canyon that pierced the mountains there was some kind of fortification or observation post, a tower, etc., and on the coastal cliffs defenses were arranged in systematic order, so that from a given fortress it was often possible to maintain watch over several fortified positions.”