Director Petro P. Tolochko, NAS academician

The history of the NAS Institute of Archaeology goes back to the spring of 1919, when the Commission for compiling the archaeological map of Ukraine was organized in the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Two years later it was transformed into the Archaeological Commission of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and on February 6, 1922 – into the Archaeological Committee within the History and Philology Department of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, on whose base the All-Ukrainian Archaeological Committee was formed in 1924. The latter served as the basis for setting up the Institute for History of Material Culture of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1934) in compliance with a resolution of the Academy Presidium. In 1938 the Institute was renamed as the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

The aim of the research done at the NAS Institute of Archaeology is the comprehensive study of archaeological relics, as well as elucidation of issues of early and medieval history and culture of Ukraine: primary settling of the earliest tribes on the territory of the present Ukraine, the origin and development of renewing forms in economy, socio-economic and ethnic development of the early population of Ukraine, history and culture of the Scythians and Sarmatians, antique city-states of the Northern Black Sea coastal territory, ethnogenesis and early history of the East Slavs, history and culture of Kyiv Rus and Kyiv as its capital. The range of tasks the Institute is engaged in also includes archaeological excavations on the sites of land development.