Traditional rites of feeding: Morphology, meaning, evolution
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33910/2687-1262-2019-1-2-105-115Keywords:
feeding rite, traditional culture, Amur River region, invariant structures, symbolic exchangeAbstract
The paper focuses on the structure, meaning and evolution of the rite of feeding. The study presents our algorithm of reconstructing invariant mental patterns exemplified by traditional culture of the Amur River region. Due to the prevalence of ethnographic facts over related archaeology, we may obtain more findings and answers that pertain to archaic thought by projecting the culture of the fishermen and hunters of late 19th — early 20th century on to a hypothetical primitive society.
Based on structural-semantic methodology and on ethnographic, folklore, linguistic and archival materials of late 19th — early 20th century on the one hand, and on field studies of the contemporary culture of the indigenous peoples of the Amur River region on the other, we have constructed our morphology of traditional rites, studied their main inter-component relations, and presented new conclusions as per semantics of ‘feeding’ ceremonies.
We have established how the composition of the sacrament/gift and the means of its translation relate to the structure of a mythological and social cosmos. We have shown the specific ways of representing universal subconscious categories, and also the way the principles of ritual communication reflect social and economic processes. Feeding ceremonies have turned out to be structurally homogeneous with models of equivalent social and economic exchange. Comparison of these two spheres has revealed such relations as isomorphism and homomorphism.
The outcomes of our analysis indicate that the cultural tradition we studied did not yet display a clear separation of the sacral from the secular. This observation is substantiated by the fact that there was no specified sacerdotal function in the tribe, and that the ritual was simple and virtually free from taboos, coercion, or consecrated offerings. Such features are characteristic of archaic traditional cultures based on the hunter-gatherer society. At the same time, in the Amur River region we can trace a certain dynamic that manifested itself in the shift from communicating with spirits to worshiping them, from detailed specialisation of different quasi-subjects to the integration of various sources of benefits and wealth in one deity. We suggest that the changes were the result of contacts that local fishermen and hunters had with other peoples who had established productive economy.
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