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(*13 April 1931 - [dagger]17 October 2013)
On October 17, 2013, the Doctor of Historical Sciences, Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute, Full Member of the Societas Iranologica Europaea, Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Elena Efimovna Kuz'mina leftthis world. She was one of the brightest representatives of the Russian (Soviet) School of Archaeology, a true preserver and a great successor of these traditions. Today it is impossible to imagine a work in the field of Indo-Iranian origins without reference to her research. Moreover, she made a significant contribution to the archaeological study of the Eurasian Bronze Age.
E. E. Kuz'mina was born in Moscow on April 13, 1931. She was fascinated by archaeology during her school years and received an excellent education at Moscow State University. Then, in the Leningrad branch of the Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR she completed her graduate studies (1954-1957) under the supervision of Professor M. P. Gryaznov. The young researcher absorbed all the most recent advances that were being offered by the archaeological schools of Moscow and Leningrad. Largely due to her work in Tajikistan, as part of an expedition under the prominent orientalist Professor M. M. Diakonov, E. E. Kuz'mina became interested in linguistic and cultural studies. This combination of research areas largely determined her research path. Over the next years, at the Institute of Archaeology, Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1958-1986) and at the Russian Institute for Cultural Research (since 1986), she remained faithful to these topics in their relationship to the study of the Andronovo cultural community in the Bronze Age. It should be emphasized that Elena Kuz'mina's scientific interests were very diverse. But it was field archaeology, which she practiced in many regions of Eurasia, that occupied first place.
Her favorite research topic was the ethnogenesis of the Bronze Age populations who inhabited the Eurasian steppe region, which requires knowledge not only of sites, material and spiritual culture, but also of ethnography, philology, anthropology and other disciplines. Elena Efimovna was well grounded in all these fields. In addition, E. E. Kuz'mina was always attracted to problems associated with the plastic and applied arts of the ancient populations of the steppe and forest-steppe regions of Eurasia in the...