The European Component in the Ethnic and Cultural Dialog of Siberian Society: The Archaeological and Historical Context

The article is dedicated to the detection on archaeological data of a European component in the ethnic and cultural interaction of the peoples in the age of colonization. This subject is new to the Russian archaeology of Siberia. Introduction of archaeological sources for scientific use allows taking new approaches to studying Russian development of the region, and let see unnoticed before aspects or to consider them from another point of view. One of such aspects is studying "Russian" import or "Russian" goods, which had been the name for all the goods delivered into Siberia, both domestic and foreign ones. Penetration of the Russian import into Siberia is archaeo-logically fixed on aborigine sites already on the edge of the 1 and 2 millenniums A.D. Among "Russian" goods occurred to autochthons also were European items. Long-termed half-millennium connections prepared successful colonization of Siberia in the end of the XVI and XVII centuries. Excavations of the Russian sites also provide materials for "Russian" import, in which European items have been included besides domestic production. Ethnic and cultural interaction of the Siberian peoples with the Western world embraced not only trade and exchange relations, yet also by Europeanization strengthening of the country, all spectrum of everyday life. Not only the fact of European productions spreading is important, but also taking of them by Russian and since the XVII century by Siberian society. The main carriers of elements of the western culture were willing and unwilling European migrants and the key translators of various culture (including European) traditions were Russians. Western patterns infiltrated through the social elite and the traders and dissipated among all the estates and country territory, filtered by own national and state interests, traditions and experience. The taking process was not reduced to importation of western patterns and was not a straight adoption. Russian culture began to produce ideas, principles, and mechanisms stage close to European ones. Western trends penetration into Siberia has found an archaeological reflection in various interior items, costume details, household things, such as tiled stoves, glass ware, "Pole" or "Hungarian" fashion. The renovation process that had taken Russia took Siberia too. Through many voices and multilingual ethnic and cultural dialog, in which Russians were connecting environment, came Siberian aborigines' adoption to the elements of European culture and Europeans' acquaintance with the local original culture. The discovery of Siberia and its peoples and cultures for European West had become the epoch result of Russian colonization.

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