Igor Vasilievich Dubov was a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n archaeologist who excavated one of the largest settlements on the Volga trade route

Volga trade route

In the Middle Ages, the Volga trade route connected Northern Europe and Northwestern Russia with the Caspian Sea, via the Volga River. The Rus used this route to trade with Muslim countries on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, sometimes penetrating as far as Baghdad...

, Timerevo

Timerevo

Timerevo is an archaeological site near the village of Bolshoe Timeryovo, seven kilometers southwest of Yaroslavl, Russia, which yielded the largest deposits of early medieval Arabic coins in Northern Europe.- Description and history :...

.

Dubov was born in Leningrad

Leningrad

Leningrad is the former name of Saint Petersburg, Russia.Leningrad may also refer to:- Places :* Leningrad Oblast, a federal subject of Russia, around Saint Petersburg* Leningrad, Tajikistan, capital of Muminobod district in Khatlon Province...

 but spent his young years in Yaroslavl. He studied in the Leningrad University under Mikhail Artamonov

Mikhail Artamonov

Mikhail Illarionovich Artamonov Artamonov's scientific career was centered on the Leningrad University, where he was a professor since 1935 and the head of the chair of archeology since 1949. He researched Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements by the Don River, in the North Caucasus and in the Ukraine...

 and later was a professor there. In 1972 he went to study the kurgan

Kurgan

Kurgan is the Turkic term for a tumulus; mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves, originating with its use in Soviet archaeology, now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology....

s near Yaroslavl

Yaroslavl

Yaroslavl is a city and the administrative center of Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, located northeast of Moscow. The historical part of the city, a World Heritage Site, is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Kotorosl Rivers. It is one of the Golden Ring cities, a group of historic cities...

. It was Dubov's expedition that found in Timirevo the largest hoard of 9th-century Arabic dirham

Dirham

Dirham or dirhem is a unit of currency in several Arab or Berber nations, and formerly the related unit of mass in the Ottoman Empire and Persian states...

s in Eastern Europe.

Dubov was also the first to study runic graffiti

Graffiti

Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....

 on dirhams and published a monograph on the subject. In his dissertation he examined the phenomenon of "moving cities" in Gardariki. He was appointed Director of the Russian Ethnographic Museum in 1987.