Presentative Functions of Traditional Clothing: On the Issue of the Ethno-cultural Identity of the Russian-Siberian “Chaldons”

The purpose of the article is to find out the presentative functions of the ethnic culture of the Russian-Siberian old-timers for the period of the late 19th - early 20th century. based on traditional costumes. The study is based on the author's longterm empirical materials obtained during the expeditions of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, theoretical and methodological developments of domestic and foreign scientists. An attempt is made to reach the theoretical level of interpretation of expeditionary data from the point of view of such important ethnological categories as "ethno-cultural memory", "ethno-cultural identity". The presentative function of traditional culture is to transfer information (knowledge, signs, including hidden ones) to the object, to the external environment in which representations are formed, i.e. ideas about the subject. A historiographic review of works devoted to the symbolism of traditional clothing showed that figurative-associative and psycho-emotional functions that reflected the national artistic thinking of people, as well as the internal perception of themselves and the external perception of their neighbors, fell out of the field of view of scientists. As a result, the well-known model of ethnographic study of traditional folk clothes (costumes) has been expanded in the figurative-associative aspect based on the materials of the old-timer population group (“chaldons”) of Western Siberia.

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