A Native Anthropologist’s View on Covering the “Altai Princess” Problem

ABSTRACT

This article explores conflicts between the Altai community and archeologists due to the discovery of a woman’s mummy, the “Altai Princess,” found in a burial mound of the Pazyryk time (5th–3rd centuries BCE) in the south of Siberia, in the Republic of Altai (Russia). It is argued that a “Native anthropologist” studying her own people and a “visiting anthropologist” illuminates the problem each in their own ways. Attention is drawn to facts indicating the importance of using Indigenous methodologies and research approaches from within a given ethnic culture to understand folk interpretations adequately. Key positions concerning the Altai are outlined on the basis of the author’s field materials. It is emphasized that the demand to (re)bury the “Altai Princess” is based on the tradition of observing the “border” between the earthly and the other world. This corresponds to a key idea of Burkhanism in ritual and everyday life. Discourse about the “Altai princess” can be understood through Altai traditional sacral concepts and practices. Outsider anthropologists’ abstract assertions claiming that the Altai national intelligentsia is responsible for social conflict with archeologists are questioned.

KEYWORDS:

• Altaians
• southern Siberia
• ethnic culture
• worldview
• archeological debate
• “Altai Princess”
• “Ukok Princess”
• Indigenous research methodology

Notes

1. The film is available as part of the BBC Horizon series, 1997 Ice Mummies Part 1, “The Ice Maiden” https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7njbxh (accessed June 21, 2021). See also the NOVA film “The Ice Maiden” 1998, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUtgQ6dQUF0 (accessed June 21, 2021).

2. The sensationally tattooed and well-preserved mummy, or samples of her, were analyzed in diverse museums in Novosibirsk, Moscow, Bern, and elsewhere. She also was subjected to the Soviet-era techniques honed in the lab that preserved Lenin.

3. Gertjan Plets, as a graduate student in Belgium in 2013, wrote me with an idea for an article about the “Altai Princess” for this journal. I explained we were interested only if the article was co-authored by his Indigenous and local collaborators from Gorno-Altaisk State University. To my delight, he came through with the co-authored article cited here, emphasizing that collaboration with local scholars is crucial for understanding ethnographically informed meaning and contexts behind archeological sites. The article became one of our most read and was a key to the success of the theme issue titled “Archeology and Nationalism,” ironic given some of Nadezhda Tadina’s comments ahead. See Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, “Editor’s Introduction: Archeology and Nationalism,” Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia, 2013, vol. 52 (2), pp. 3–4.

4. Compare the excellent scholarship of Indigenous Altaian cultural anthropologist Svetlana Tiukhteneva, for example “Art and Ethnic Identity: On the Example of the Culture of the Altai People,” Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia, 2015, vol. 54 (3), pp. 58–78; and Zemlia. Voda. Khan-Altai: etnicheskaia kul’tura altaitsev v XX veke, Elista, 2009.