Praskovia Uvarova’s Archeological Ambitions: Sex, Science, and Empire in Nineteenth‐Century Russia

Abstract

In this article I merge the three of the nineteenth century’s dominant markers of modernity—gender, science, and modernity—in the person of Praskovia Sergeevna Uvarova. Arguably the most influential character in prerevolutionary archeology through her multiple functions at the Imperial Moscow Archeological Society, she is at best a shadow figure in the history of Russian science. Although Uvarova herself must be held to blame in large measure for this, the connections that this female draws between science and empire are crucial to our understanding of the implications of the three analytical categories come together in late imperial Russia.