Our work explores the history of the Russian Empire which, when it collapsed in 1917, contained territory we now think of as the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Poland, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan. (Tsar Alexander II sold Alaska in 1867, otherwise the United States would be on that list as well.) It traces the implications of distance and proximity, distribution and density, accessibility and isolation.
We try to find new ways of navigating between the micro and macro scales of such a vast terrain. We try to identify commercial and cultural networks by tracing the movement of goods. We try to figure out where the rivers - and relics and orchards and pastures - used to be.
Because if we can reconstruct the spatial structure of the past, perhaps we can better understand what "empire" meant in practice.
Owl-shaped aryballos. Wisdom old and new. Circa 640 BCE.
