Ceremonial codes of culture: on reconstruction of the myth-and-ritual complex of the Kulai people

According to the ethnologists' research dated from the second half of the 20th century, the long-established relation between myth and ritual has a deep semantic unity caused not by genetic but rather by paradigmatic origin. Modern Russian scientists use terms "ceremony" and "ritual" as equivalents, using the latter as an international term. N.I. Tolstoy (1995) defined ceremony as a multilevel text that includes elements of different codes: action, objective, verbal, personal, locative, temporal, musical and graphic. In a ceremonial structure, while being complementary, different codes correspond to the world-view system and mythological world-view of a traditional culture. A considerable part of ceremonial codes is fixed during the research of archaeological monuments and artifacts in the context of archaeological complexes. Graphic, personal, locative and, partially, temporal codes of burial ceremonial were distinguished due to the analysis of the material collected in Barsovsk VII burial ground (Surgut Priob 'ye) of the Kulai historical-cultural community of the Iron Age period of Western Siberia. The unique complex of artistic repoussage from Barsovsk VII burial ground (Surgut Priob 'ye) is considered as one of the necropolis structure elements. Comparison between the necropolis planigraphy and bronze religious castings composition, wrapped in birch bark, revealed the correspondence between them that consists in space structuring by two perpendicular axes; sacral space center situation in axes intersection point; opposition between objects from different parts; arched location of certain objects. It was determined that the two-dimensional organization of text space indicates their connection with the World Tree's mythologem and reflects the cosmological and religious conceptions of the ancient shamanistic complex. Cosmic center symbols allow interpreting a human buried with the bronze statuettes as a minister of religion or as a person involved in shamanism - a man of a high social/ritual rank. Ethical and, probably, "etiological" (causal) concepts are shown by space division as well as by an opposition of its parts. It is possible that the structure of the social hierarchy was organized and described in accordance with this composition principle. Despite the fact, that ceremonial codes revealed during the analysis cannot be supplemented with verbal and musical codes, their semantics, nevertheless, indicates a group of sacral texts modeling a similar world-view. Thus, the possibility of mythologem reconstruction concerning the otherness of the Kulai people is a realistic objective that can be fulfilled by the semantic analysis of texts used in burial rites.

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