KAZAKH SAUKELES IN THE COLLECTION OF THE ST. PETERSBURG KUNSTKAMERA (HISTORY OF EXISTENCE, SEMANTICS AND ROLE IN RITUARY CULTURE)

Abstract

Abstract: The Kazakh culture collections of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences include four female wedding headdresses – saukele (сəукеле) – originating from various regions of Kazakhstan and dating back to the 1850s – 1930s. Despite keen interest in saukele shown by Kazakh culture researchers, many aspects of this headdress decoration and meaning of their imagery remain understudied until today. The aim of the present article is to introduce these museum objects into scholarly context as an ethnographic source as well as to establish their history and characteristic existence of such headdress type in the Kazakh culture by way or a comparative historical and semantic analysis.

The article is based on the results of scientific annotation of objects from the collection of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) RAS. Information from museum documentations (museum inventories), archival materials from the MAE RAS, and materials from the archives of the Academy of Sciences were used as additional sources. Illustrative materials are presented by photographs from the collection of the MAE RAS and from the author’s personal collection.

The study used methods of comparative historical and semantic analysis.