A Visitor's Guide to Shamans and Shamanism
March 1, 2020 DOI: 10.3167/sib.2020.190104 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
Guidebooks from the late imperial Kunstkamera in St. Petersburg document the removal of a Russian ethnography gallery and the reorganization of Siberian and Central Asian objects into an Asian ethnographic collection. In this new arrangement, shamanism became a unifying category that presented Russia in Asia as a culturally contiguous imperial space east of the Urals.
Study at a glance
| Design | historical analysis |
|---|---|
| Key finding | In the Kunstkamera's reorganization, shamanism emerged as a category that unified Russia in Asia as a culturally contiguous imperial space east of the Urals. |
Abstract
In the late imperial era, the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera) in St. Petersburg produced a series of guidebooks for visitors that provided an account of the changes in the gallery spaces and collections within the museum. Among the changes was a reorganization of the collection that brought about the removal of a gallery dedicated to Russian ethnography, which had housed Siberian, Central Asian, and a small number of European Russian objects. Siberian and Central Asian materials were then presented by the museum in an Asian ethnographic collection. In this new Asian collection, shamanism emerged as a category that operated to unify Russia in Asia as a culturally contiguous space located in an imperial elsewhere east of the Urals.