Burial food and funeral feast remains from a Northern Selkup grave of 19th century: the experience of ethnoarchaeological analysis

Abstract

The article deals with an attempt to interpret archaeological and paleoecological sources obtained during the excavation of a Selkup grave in an ancient burial ground situated in the upper river Taz area (Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District, Russia), by comparing them with ethnographic data. The goal of the paper is to examine historical dynamics of these components in the funeral ritual of the Northern Selkups during the 19th century as traditional preparation of burial food and the funeral feast process. The choice of this particular archaeological site relates to the unique and unusually well-preserved remains of organic materials in the grave that gave a most detailed and complete picture of the composition of the burial food and the funeral feast. In order to interpret the archaeological data we have used information from published ethnographical sources and archival documents as well as materials from the ethnographic field research of funeral traditions of the Selkups of the Upper Taz river, held in 2013 simultaneously with archaeological work. The study made it possible to determine not only probable burial food and funeral feast food of the Northern Selkup burial but also the form and the content of the ritual practice, and to present them in the cultural and historical contexts. As a matter of fact, it was concluded that the closest analogies to the ritual of the studied object are found in earlier archaeological data associated with the Southern Selkups and Eastern Khanty (16–17th centuries) and in ethnographic sources on the Khanty from remote areas which are not directly adjacent to the Taz River basin. The clearly appeared trace of the Southern Selkups and Khanty in the funeral ritual, in our opinion, marks cultural components which played a key role in formation of the Selkup local community of the Upper Taz river. Bones and food scraps of the abundant funeral feast buried on top of the grave are a notable feature of the studied Selkup burial sites which indicate the ancient origin of considerable variability of the Northern Selkup’s funeral ritual.

Keywords

• Western Siberia
• ethnoarchaeology
• Northern Selkups
• funeral ritual
• ritual food