Советско-монгольская комплексная историко-культурная экспедиция. 1971 г. — третий сезон. Дневник этнографического отряда (продолжение: 20 июля – 9 августа 1971 г.)

The aim of the present article is to introduce the new data on the history of ethnographic studies of Mongolian peoples. In 2018–2019, Mongolian Studies published abstracts from the diary of the ethnographical team of the Soviet-Mongolian Complex Expedition for Historical-Cultural Studies; the publications deal with the year 1969, the first season of the Expeditions’ work in Mongolia. The 2020 article in Mongolian Studies includes the materials of the diary that deal with the next field season in Mongolia in 1970. This article continues the series of ethnographical diary publications and deals with the third season in 1971, focusing on meetings with scholars from different countries in Ulan-Bator and the Expedition’s work in the central and western aimaks of Mongolia.

Археологические материалы из раскопок 1929–1937 гг. на территории Калмыкии (по фондам Саратовского областного музея краеведения)

Introduction. The history of archaeological studies on the territory of the Republic of Kalmykia began with the 1929 archaeological-ethnographical expedition of the Saratov Oblast´ Museum of Local Studies. The expedition’s field work included archaeological probings and diggings. The aim of the present study is to do a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the archaeological collections of Saratov Museum recovered during archaeological excavations in the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast´ in the period between 1929 and 1937. Results. In general, the methodological level of the seexcavations directed by P. S. Rykov was quite good for the time they were conducted. The fact that most of the findings were accepted by the Museum immediately after the field season was closed maybe seen as the evidence of the professionalism of the team during the planning of the expedition and its actual work. Notably, practically all the results of the archaeological research (1929–1937) were published. The numbering of finds in the registration cards largely corresponds to that of the field report, which indicates that the field inventory was compiled in the process of field and laboratory work. In addition, some of the finds in the field inventory are listed as fragmented clay vessels, while in the Museum, they are recorded as whole items, which also indicates the methodological level of the work done.Conclusion. The collections in questionare a valuable source as far as the archaeology of the Volga-Manych steppes is concerned, because the physical material that they include is illustrative of the main types of archaeological sites recovered on the territory of modern Kalmykia, i. e. relating to settlement types (settlements, camps, selishcha) and burial types (burials under earth mounds and scattered burials). These collections feature items from allmajor eras: Eneolithic, Bronze, Early Iron, and Middle Ages.

La Peña del Castillo (Peñas de San Pedro, Albacete) Campaña de 2020

In this article, the results of the field season 2020 excavation in La Peña del Castillo (Peñas de San Pedro, Albacete) are presented. It is a site with a long and discontinuous time frame from the Late Bronze Age to the 19th century. The archaeological activities project aims to know the entity of the enclave and the different settlement patterns throughout its occupation.

Советско-монгольская комплексная историко-культурная экспедиция. 1970 год — второй сезон. Дневник этнографического отряда (продолжение: 16 сентября – 28 сентября 1970 г.)

The aim of the present article is to introduce the new data on the history of ethnographic studies of Mongolian peoples. In 2018–2019, Mongolian Studies published abstracts from the diary of the ethnographical team of the Soviet-Mongolian Complex Expedition for Historical-Cultural Studies; the publications deal with the year 1969, the first season of the Expeditions’ work in Mongolia. The 2020 article in Mongolian Studies includes the materials of the diary that deal with the next field season in Mongolia in 1970. This article continues the series of ethnographical diary publications, focusing on meetings with scholars from different countries in Ulan-Bator and the Expedition’s work in the central aimaks of Mongolia.

Gourimadi Archaeological Project. The results from the first excavation season

The Norwegian Institute at Athens received a permit from the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports in 2018 to conduct a five-year excavation project at the site of Gourimadi in southern Euboea. The first field season, conducted in June 2018, lasted for four weeks during which two trenches were opened at the site and partially excavated by a Norwegian-Greek team of researchers and students. The aim of the project is to understand the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in this part of the Aegean in the light of emerging regional maritime interaction networks and lasting settlement of the Cycladic islands. In addition, data collected from both the surface and excavation indicate that Gourimadi can contribute potentially crucial information needed for examining the Aegean prehistoric obsidian exchange and the introduction of metallurgy in the same region. Finally, the project is the first systematic (i.e. non-rescue) excavation of a prehistoric site in southern Euboea. The 2018 excavation confirmed our expectations about the importance of the site and has added to our understanding of prehistoric Euboea and the Aegean. The paper contains a brief preliminary but comprehensive report of the 2018 Gourimadi Archaeological Project results.

The Fable of the Beetle in Contemporary Aramaic and Kurmanji

The fable of an insect and a mouse (or some other animal), who marry and embark on a life together, only to end in tragedy, is widely disseminated from the Mediterranean region to India. One version involving a beetle (Ṭuroyo keze, Kurmanji kêz) circulates throughout Anatolia and Iraq. The following Ṭuroyo and Kurmanji version was recorded during the 2020 summer field season of the Russian expedition to Ṭur Abdin in the village of Dērqube from a speaker of the Bequsyone dialect. She relates the narrative portions of the fable in Ṭuroyo, but switches to Kurmanji for its versified portions. In addition to the text and a translation, this study includes an interlinear glossing. It also discusses the motifs of the fable according to the standard classification scheme, as well as its relationship to other attested versions collected in various languages including Arabic, Kurmanji, and Turkish.

Provocative landscapes: a study of everyday cultural landscapes at the outskirts of agglomerations

The paper describes research principles and preliminary results of collaborative interdisciplinary research project aimed at the study of everyday cultural landscapes on the periphery of the Yekaterinburg and Tyumen urban agglomerations. The research design of the project implies a paradigm shift from expert reading of the landscapes to communicative learning of the environment, from the perception of the territories in question as resource reservoirs to their exploration as a domain of affordances providing opportunities for endogenous eco-nomic development. In 2020, an expedition worked in the villages of Tobolsk Zabolotye, in the cities of Irbit and Polevskoy of Sverdlovsk Oblast, and in the village of Belozerskoye of Kurgan Oblast. The cases and places deemed perspective in view of the application of the research method were characterized. This paper mainly pro-vides an overview of the methodological principles that underpin our ongoing study, which should be considered only as an outline of the preliminary results of the first year of field work. The main source of the theoretical inspi-ration for the project design was the idea of affordances, coined by the American psychologist James J. Gibson, who studied the problems of perception. The main methodological objective of the project is to apply the theory of affordances to the field study of strategies for everyday landscape choice. In the 2020 field season, the design of the project, envisaging comparative perspective and increased mobility of researchers, was significantly influ-enced by the method of traveling interview. While working in Tobolsk Zabolotye, we followed everyday patterns of mobility, conducting interviews along the way, discussing with the respondents the hierarchy of places and territo-ries, criteria for identifying vernacular regions, capacity of communication channels, modes of the mobility and its limitations. Concurrently, we were gaining the experience of non-discursive, embodied in materiality and corpore-ality, movement and recording local narratives of identity.

RESEARCHS OF KURGANS No. 33 AND 34 AT THE BURIAL GRAVE OF TAUSAMALY

The article presents the materials of archaeological research carried out in the field season of 2020 in the Aksu district, Almaty region of the Republic of Kazakhstan, by the employees of the Archaeological Expedition LLP. The works were carried out on mounds 33 and 34 of the Tausamaly burial ground. The burial ground consists of more than 80 embankments and occupies the entire alluvial cone of the Aksu River. The planigraphy of the burial ground, the construction of embankments, specific non-burial structures and the presence of a Pazyryk appearance on the northern outskirts of the monument (emergency excavations in 2019) made it possible to attribute the Tausamals to the Late Pazyryk type. As a result of new research, burials in stone boxes, on the back, with their heads in the northwestern sector, were revealed under the mounds of the mounds. Accompanying inventory and funeral rites allow the monuments to be dated to the end of the 1st millennium BC. Analogies are found in a small group of burials in stone and wooden boxes on the territory of Zhetysu. A similar type is found scattered among the mounds of the Sako-Usun time in the burial grounds of Kadyrbai III, at the Chilik tobacco state farm, Kzyl-Espe and others dating from the 4th century. BC. until the IV century. AD Newly examined burials in boxes supplement the available data, and their finding in a burial ground with pronounced Pazyryk features makes it possible to establish links for the entire group with the burial traditions of the nomads of Sayan-Altai and Mongolia at the end of the 1st millennium BC. and the turn of the era.