The childbirth rituals of the Yakuts: traditions and modernity

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to consider the transformation of the maternity rites among the Yakuts from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 21st centuries. The area under research is the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Eastern Siberia. The main source base was represented by the authors' field materials collected in 2016-2018 in the Verkhnevilyuysky, Churapchinsky, Ust-Aldansky, and Megino-Kangalassky districts. The field studies were conducted using modern and traditional methods of qualitative sociology. The key methods of collecting field materials included modern historical-anthropological methods of inclusive observation, and expert and in-depth interviewing of local residents. The stages of the ritual behavior practiced in preparation for conception, pregnancy, during childbirth, and during the postpartum period, as well as aimed at survival of the newborn, have been identified and clarified. The study of the transformation of the maternity rites shows that in the modern culture of the Yakuts there are only few prohibitions related to the life of the child in the first days after birth, whereas other rituals have faded away due to the development of medicine and the loss of fear, among both women and society as a whole, of infertility or death of the woman in labor or the baby in the process of birth itself.

Keywords

• transformation of traditional culture
• life cycle ceremonies
• maternity ceremonies
• ritual
• tradition
• modernity
• yakuts
• yakutia