Materials collected by the Subpolar Ethnographic Party (Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences) of 1984 in A.M. Sagalaev's archive: the Mansi of the Lower Ob

The paper presents the first generalized results of the historical source study in relation to the materials collected by the Subpolar Ethnographic Party (Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences) of 1984, which are stored in the personal archive of Andrey Markovich Sagalaev (1953-2002), a Russian ethnologist who participated in this party. The party worked among the Mansi in the north of Western Siberia, in the basin of the Severnaya Sosva River (left tributary of the Malaya Ob River; the area of the modern Beryozovsky District of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug - Yugra). The ethnographers traveled to the study area from Novosibirsk by boat along the Ob River for three weeks. Then, the party continued its journey along the rivers of the Severnaya Sosva basin by boat. Field studies were conducted under the guidance of I.N. Gemuev, researcher at the Institute of History, Philology and Philosophy (since 2001 - the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences). Other members of the party included A.M. Sagalaev (junior research fellow), A.A. Alexeev (art student), and Andris Slapins, director and cameraman of the Riga Film Studio. Important findings are reflected in publications, including monographs, and a documentary film "The Gods and Heroes of the Mansi People" (1985). However, the general content of field sources from the expedition of 1984 was neither clarified nor published. The gap is partially filled in this paper. The author structured all identified materials from A.M. Sagalaev's archive of 1984 into separate archival documents (40 in total). They were divided into three types: cartographic documents (2), texts (5), photographs (32) and an audiovisual source (one film). Each document was provided with a brief description, including its origin and content, qualitative and quantitative characteristics, etc. Maps contain information about the ways in which the expedition of 1984 organized its activities. Text documents include evidence about Mansi sanctuaries collected from informants, notations of their music, as well as plans of archaeological excavations and data on ethnographic funds of the Beryozovsky Museum of Local Lore. Almost all photographic materials (black-and-white and color negative and positive slides; photographs) were taken by A.M. Sagalaev using film cameras. Although attributing them was the most difficult and time-consuming part of the source study, the result proved its worth: a representative collection of visual sources that have been completely digitized. The collection consists of 380 photographs (or 365 individual photo landscapes). In general, the materials of the Subpolar Ethnographic Party of 1984 contain unique information about the Mansi worldview, including guardian spirits of individual families and settlements, characters of the common Mansi pantheon, as well as about their everyday life. These materials significantly expand the source base concerning ethnic phenomena in the northern part of Western Siberia in the 20th century.

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