ABSTRACT This article explores conflicts between the Altai community and archeologists due to the discovery of a woman’s mummy, the “Altai Princess,” found in a burial mound of the Pazyryk time (5th–3rd centuries BCE) in the south of Siberia, in the Republic of Altai (Russia). It is argued that a “Native anthropologist” studying her own people and a “visiting anthropologist” illuminates the problem each in their own ways. Attention is drawn to facts indicating the importance of using Indigenous methodologies and research approaches from within a given ethnic culture to understand folk interpretations adequately. Key positions concerning the Altai are outlined on the basis of the author’s field materials. It is emphasized that the demand to (re)bury the “Altai Princess” is based on the tradition of observing the “border” between the earthly and the other world. This corresponds to a key idea of Burkhanism in ritual and everyday life. Discourse about the “Altai princess” can be understood through Altai traditional sacral concepts and practices. Outsider anthropologists’ abstract assertions claiming that the Altai national intelligentsia is responsible for social conflict with archeologists are questioned.
In the 1990s, a “parade of sovereignties” swept through Russia in the form of bilateral treaties between various republics and Moscow authorities. Some Russian nationalists and centralization advoc...
The author argues that in an age of politicized ethnicity and globalization, much pressure is on traditional ways of understanding self-identity. In Dagestan, conservative customary law-based Islam and community solidarity through jamaat have been preserved well enough to counter onslaughts of outsider-agitated Wahhabi activism in the 1990s. As they have been historically, polycultural, multiethnic Dagestanis are part of a conscious, broad-based loyalty to the wider concept of Rossiia—civic Russia.
The article introduces some materials from kurgan no. 1 of the Zhaiyk-1 burial site, researched in the 2019 field season. Excavations were conducted in connection with planning for the opening of the “Zhaiyk Fortified Settlement” museum. The kurgan is situated at the entrance to the territory of the future open-air museum. Due to active anthropogenic impact, the mound was in a critical state. The central part of the kurgan had been taken down by heavy equipment; destruction was documented in the western half. The entire surface of the mound has been dug extensively by burrowing animals.Fourteen burials were studied as a result of archeological research. The mound is surrounded by a ring-shaped ditch with a marked entrance on the southern side. Buried to the west of the central grave were women in five complexes, and on the eastern side men, in seven complexes. The material obtained was deposited over several centuries: from the fifth–fourth through the fourth–third centuries BCE. This article emphasizes the female burials, since they are better preserved. Analysis of this and other factors permits us to arrive at conclusions about the significance of the role of women in ancient society.
