Embodied in contemporaneity: negotiating identity through rock art in contemporary Siberia and Central Asia

Summary

Along with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Indigenous people in Siberia and Central Asia began to pay more attention to their past, which since then has been vigorously explored as a source of cultural identity. Particularly interesting aspect of this process concern contemporary use of prehistoric rock art. In the presentation I will refer to different contexts of such uses, which imply negotiating of the identity. Basing on the examples, I will show that rock art in Siberia and Central Asia is a real part of contemporary culture, that it actively influences everyday life and is used politically, socially and artistically. I will pay a particular attention to contemporary art, a very new phenomenon, where artists consciously adapt rock art imagery to manifest their link with ancestral past. All of the issues explored in the paper will demonstrate that prehistoric rock art in Central Asia and Siberia is embodied in contemporaneity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Rock Art, Embodiment, and Identity

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15513