Baturyn Project

In 2001 the Canada-Ukraine Archaeological Expedition was founded to conduct annual excavations in the Left-Bank Cossack Hetmanate capital of Baturyn. Sponsored by CIUS under its Kowalsky Program for the Study of Eastern Ukraine, the Baturyn Project was directed by Dr. Zenon E. Kohut, with a CIUS research fellow in Toronto, Dr. Volodymyr Mezentsev, appointed the project’s Canadian executive director. With his retirement in 2014, Dr. Kohut ceased to be the project’s director but continued his association with the project as its academic advisor. In an administrative restructuring in 2020, the Baturyn Project was transferred from the Kowalsky Program for the Study of Eastern Ukraine to the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research. The Ucrainica Research Institute in Toronto is additional sponsor of the historical and archaeological study of Baturyn of the Cossack era.

In Ukraine the Baturyn expedition was based in the Faculty of History at Chernihiv National Pedagogical University. The late Dr. Volodymyr Kovalenko (1954–2016), former chair of the Department of History and Archeology of Ukraine at that university, was the expedition leader until 2011. It is now headed by his former assistant, archaeologist Iurii Sytyi. Up to one hundred archeologists, historians, and students from universities, preserves, and museums of Ukraine in Chernihiv, Kyiv, Nizhyn, Hlukhiv, Baturyn, Sumy, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Melitopol, Lviv, Lutsk, and Chernivtsi, as well as from Toronto, Edmonton, and Montreal, have participated in the summer excavations at Baturyn. Thousands of artifacts uncovered by the expedition have been preserved, exhibited, and studied at the local archeological museum, which was founded in 2009. Moreover, the Baturyn research results have been critical for the overall reconstruction of the hetman’s capital. In 2008 the Resurrection Church, hetman’s residence and office, state treasury, and ramparts of Baturyn’s citadel were reconstructed by state restorers using predominantly the archaeological sources of the Baturyn Project.

The results of the excavations have been presented in annual richly illustrated pamphlets. These publications are now accessible on this web page.