Mikhail Pavlovich Ovchinnikov

Mikhail Pavlovich Ovchinnikov (5 November 1844 – 11 June 1921) was a Russian revolutionary, political exile, and amateur archeologist active in the Irkutsk Governorate.

He visited villages and towns in the Kaluga, Moscow, Oryol, Tula, Tver Governorates among others to spread their political ideals.

He made repeated requests for permission to participate in the few regional imperial institutions but they were denied by Governor-General Alexey Ignatiev.

Some Sakha residents of Olyokminsk practiced syncretic mixture of their traditional shamanist beliefs and Orthodox Christianity.

In 1892 he regained the ability to travel to European Russia with the exception of the Moscow and Saint Petersburg Governorates.

[3] Ovchinnikov developed his skills as a self-taught archaeologist,[2] and became an active part of the Eastern Siberian Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society (ESBIRGS).

In 1900 Ovchinnikov was elected a full time member and eight years later became the conservator of the museum maintained in Irkutsk.

[5] Ovchinnikov interviewed local Sakha people about their social customs and religious beliefs while exiled at Olyokminsk.

"[10] During building construction outside Irkutsk in Glazkov (within the contemporary Sverdlovsk district) a series of ancient burials were uncovered.

The creation of infrastructure including depots, stations, secondary roads destroyed several hundred ancient burials of the Glazkovsky Necropolis.

[17] Contemporaries of Ovchinnikov called him "the Father of Siberian Archeology" due his many years of raising interest in the ancient history of Eastern Siberia.

Although generally unwilling to publish his conclusions, his conviction that bronze capable societies once existed in the region was seen as an especially important intellectual development.

Bernhard Petri recalled the personal study of Ovchinnikov being quite cramped: "[there were] dusty mountains, from which here and there corners of books, manuscripts, old newspapers, icons, ancient weapons, pictures with things sewn on them, and various bundles and shapeless objects stuck out.

It was the same in the museum: in the corners, in drawers, behind cabinets everywhere there were “blockages” of things, everywhere there were boxes, bundles were stuffed, individual objects lay… Not only were the collections not systematized, but they were not even arranged into three periods - Stone, Bronze, and Iron.

"[2]In 2003 Bair Dashibalov re-examined the published works of Ovchinnikov and found that he "was carried away by the proof of the Yakut presence in the Baikal region.

[5] In 2016 Vladimir Ushnitsky concluded that Ovchinnikov expanded the archeological knowledge of Eastern Siberia but found his work on Sakha folklore particularly valuable for ethnographer researchers.