Residential buildings of the Russian population in the Omsk Irtysh region in the 17th — beginning of the 20th c. in the archaeological and architectural-ethnographic dimension

Abstract

Over the past thirty-five years, a series of archaeological sites of the period of the Russian colonization of Siberia have been investigated in the territory of the Siberian macroregion, which made it possible to identify regional features and to trace evolution of the socio-cultural identity of the Russian Siberian in the 17th–19th cc. A topical issue is the in-depth study of the processes of ethno-cultural adaptation in microregions. In this work, as one of the aspects of adaptation, changes in the house exterior in the Omsk Irtysh region are considered. This work is aimed to consider main types of the residential buildings of the Russian population in the Omsk Irtysh region in the 17th — early 20th c. in order to determine their specifics and development trends. The work is carried by a complex approach, involving the use of different types of sources, such as archaeological, written, and ethnographic. To compare the buildings studied in the Omsk Irtysh region with houses in other regions, a comparative historical method was used. Analysis of the archaeological materials on the architecture and layout of urban dwellings of the 17th–18th cc. showed specifics of the housing in different parts of the town. The houses of the representatives of the tsarist administration, senior clergy, and military commanders with multi-chambered buildings were located in the territory of the kremlin — the central part of the town. In the walled part of Western Siberian towns, where representatives of other social groups lived, both single-chambered and multi-chambered houses were built, although so far only few of them have been identified archaeologically. Stoves with chimneys and mica windows, as socially significant structural elements of the house, were gradually becoming attributes of the dwellings not only of the representatives of the tsarist administration, but also of the middle strata of the townspeople. In the rural areas, Russian immigrants in the 17th — first half of the 18th c. were erecting multi-chambered buildings of a large area. The set of socially-marking structural elements was the same as in the town. The archaeological material obtained during the study of residential buildings of the rural sites of the Irtysh Basin is generally of the same type and is equally characteristic of village and town alike. Based on the results of the author’s own ethnographic observations, a characteristics of individual residential buildings of the 19th — beginning of the 20th c. is given. There has been noted the prevalence of two-chambered dwellings by the end of the 19th century in the Russian village, which required less building material, as compared with multi-chambered counterparts, and were easier to heat. Multi-chambered buildings and carved platbands constituted socially marking traits of dwellings of the wealthy strata of the rural population. The field observations warranted further archaeological and ethnographic studies of the rural and urban wooden architecture to gain a deeper insight on the evolution of the housebuilding that combined traditional elements of the 17th–18th cc. with innovations, simplification, and standardization of the 19th–20th cc.

Keywords

• residential buildings
• omsk irtysh region
• the 17th — beginning of the 20th century
• archeology
• ethnography of russians.