Archeologists visited “Land of the Leopard” to assess the state of archaeological sites located in the national park. It is expected that in 2015 there will be a new exciting tourist route, which will include a visit to the sites and fortifications.
Archaeological sites in the Khasan district of Primorye have been actively conducted for the last few decades. Only in the territory, which is a part of “Land of the Leopard”, 12 archaeological monuments have been recorded. However, they belong to very diverse cultural and chronological periods – from the Middle and Late Neolithic (VII-III thousand years ago) to the early Middle Ages (V-XIII centuries AD.).
Due to this fact “Land of the Leopard” staff has been planning for a long time to organize in the National Park sightseeing routes that would not only tell about the flora and fauna of Primorye, but also about the ancient history of these places. Specialists from Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East came to the national park to tell about local monuments of antiquity.
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The scientists’ program included a joint scientific assessment of the Barabash-3, Barabash-4 and Barabash-5 archaeological sites. The first one, Barabash-3, consists of two main monuments – forge of the early Iron Age, relating to Yankovskaya culture (VIII-V cc. BC. E.) and Bohai shrine (approximately VII-X century AD.). And during the excavation the main borders of the ancient buildings can be clearly seen.
Two monument belonging to completely different periods of time are only two dozens of meters from each other and, with appropriate training can become bright tourist facilities. Other inspected sites, including military pillboxes, were also interesting from the point of view of tourism.
“It is valuable that almost all of the monuments here contain more than one cultural horizon, – says Evgeny Krutyh. – Three and four different eras can be detected in one monument, and you can sometimes trace their evolution, and to create a slice of Archaeology and demonstrate it directly on the site”.
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«It is expected that a draft plan of the route will be ready this fall, and the opening of the trail will be held in 2015. However, plans of the ”Land of the Leopard” management go beyond this: in the next few years it is planned to launch educational routs that are also likely to contain archeological elements”.
“We have seen that there are great archaeological sites in our territory, – says Elena Salmanova, deputy science director of FSBI “Land of the Leopard”. – Development of the educational tourism is one of the main objectives of the National park and these interesting monuments will help us to convey information about the history of these places and these people who at all times lived side by side with the now rare big cat – the Amur leopard, to the residents and visitors of Primorye“.