Earth House, Chum and Reindeer Shed: Ethnoarchaeological Research on Household and Settlement Organization of Mobile Hunter-Fisher-Reindeer Herders in Western Siberia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Empirical Approaches to Mobile Pastoralist Households" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Taz Selkup are a Siberian indigenous group of hunters, fishers and reindeer herders in the northern taiga between Ob' and Yenisei. In the 17th and 18th centuries they have migrated north from Tomsk region, and in the new territory have preserved their nomadic ways until today. The adaptation to the new environment and its effects on material and immaterial culture, language and self-perception are of great interest from an anthropological point of view. Ethnoarchaeological research of a Russian-German team among the Taz Selkup investigates the effects of that migration into the new environment on material and immaterial, and the archaeological visibility of these processes, with special attention to the effects of the uptake of reindeer husbandry into the lifeways. Fieldwork focuses on temporary settlements, shedding light on patterns of site location, dwelling types and the interconnections with the requirements of a subsistence economy including the seasonal cycle of reindeer keeping. By comparing ethnographic information and excavation results from winter earth houses, conical tents (chums) and lighter rectangular tent structure, detailed insights into household organization, material patters and their archaeological foot print are gained. Special systematic attention is paid to what cannot be seen with archaeological methods.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Empirical Approaches to Mobile Pastoralist Households   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24568