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An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Reconstruction of the History of Antiquity Reconstruction of events and processes of antiquity involves working with different types of sources, which require a researcher to have both numerous specialized knowledge and a constant search for new approaches to their interpretation. Each of the types of sources on the history of the ancient world has its own specifics, so special historical disciplines — epigraphy, archeology, numismatics — play an important role in the development of ancient history studies. Working with written sources is impossible without philological criticism of the text, without solving problems related to the safety of documents, the origin and existence of the text from the moment of creation to the present day. The part “Historian and Text” contains articles showing the variety of sources about the era of antiquity and demonstrating modern approaches to historical reconstruction.
The part “Soviet Antiquity” is devoted to various aspects of studying the history of classical antiquity and the ancient East in the Soviet Union. Contrary to popular belief, Soviet historical science was not something monolithic. Its study opens a complex picture of the interaction of concepts, metropolitan and peripheral institutions, the relationship of individual researchers. Specific historical events, both large-scale (the Great Patriotic War) and less significant, also influenced the development of the history of the ancient world, a field of knowledge that, at first glance, is very far from modernity. That part of the issue includes the articles that make it possible to form a comprehensive picture of the Soviet classical studies throughout most of their existence.