Fjodor N. Petrov
Museum of Archeology and Local History, Dubna (steppe_exp@mail.ru)
Key words: Arkaim, settlement, Bronze Age, Trans-Urals, historiography, popular literature.
 
The settlement Arkaim is widely known in Russia and in the world, popular as a place of historical and “esoterical” tourism. A large museum complex was found there. However, this archaeological site has not been studied entirely. Materials have been published partially. Key data of its planigraphy and stratigraphy has been unavailable to the scientific society for more than twenty years, which makes principally unverifiable all the created and replicated reconstructions of the settlement. A lot of popular publications have been devoted to Arkaim, which contain articles and materials made at a very good level. Nevertheless, the disproportion of scientific and popular data, the popularization of speculative hypotheses and unproven suggestions, and also active usage of artefacts and images, which do not have any relation to the archaeological site, exists in all those publications. It is necessary to provide real scientific review of the popularization of the Arkaim materials, clear it from all unreliable hypotheses and foreign artefacts. Another important task is the continuation of the archaeological field researches of the settlement Arkaim. Apart from the solving the scientific tasks, it will allow creating new informational causes and finding the solution of the current situation that suggests that the quantity of the anti-scientific information distributing in the society about the settlement is much more than the quantity of the popular materials.