Today, Tara is the only city in Western Siberia where archaeological research has been carried out purposefully for seventeen years. It is not surprising that collections of Tarsk artifacts regularly become the decoration of Omsk museums. A long–term exhibition entitled “Tara is a particularly significant but unknown pearl of Western Siberia” was held in the Omsk Fortress for several months.
“In 2007, local historians asked us to find the foundations of churches destroyed in the 1930s, when they wanted to create a new urban development plan for Tara and occupy these lands with shops, shopping malls and other new buildings. I arrived, looked at it and decided: if there is any sign, then I will start work. I studied earlier, and this city was not of great interest to me. I didn’t have to wait long for the signs. First, my student Sasha Shlyushinsky found a silver cross on the site of the St. Nicholas Church. I was just walking along the path, bent down and found it. I said then: it’s a good sign, but it’s a sign, Sasha, for you. And then we went for a walk through the streets of Tara, they showed me the city. And I found a Chinese coin, a real one, with a square hole – not from catalogs, not a “new model”. And I understood: Well, we’ll have to work. That’s how it all started,” says Sergey Tataurov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Head of the Archeology Sector of the Omsk Branch of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Simply put, the city itself called Omsk.
The Archaeological Pearl of Western Siberia
