Background
Khvoyka was born in the village of Semín, Kingdom of Bohemia – then part of the Austrian Empire – on 21 February 1850.
Khvoyka was born in the village of Semín, Kingdom of Bohemia – then part of the Austrian Empire – on 21 February 1850.
He also researched the Scythian, Zarubintsy, Chernyakhov and early Slavic archaeological cultures. After graduating from the Academy of Commerce in Chrudim he lived in Prague for a time, before emigrating to the Russian Empire. From 1876 he lived in Kyiv and worked as a teacher.
He turned his attention to archaeology in the 1890s and excavated around Kyiv and the Dnieper region.
He was one of the founders of Kyiv"s Museum of Antiquities and Art, now the National Historical Museum, and the first curator of its archaeological collection. Khvoyka discovered the Trypillian culture in Ukraine.
The exact year of his discovery is uncertain: 1893, 1896 or 1887. He presented his findings at the 11th Congress of Archaeologists in 1897.
The same culture was discovered in Romania around the same time, where it was called the Cucuteni culture.
Khvoyka died in Kyiv on 20 October 1914. He is buried in the Baikove Cemetery. In 1962 Novokirillovskaya Street in Kyiv, where Khvoyka lived from 1898 to his death in 1914, was renamed in his honour, and a memorial plaque was installed there.
In 2000 the National Bank of Ukraine issued a commemorative two hrivna coin two mark the 150th anniversary of Khvoyka"s birth.