Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 46 (3) 2018   DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2018.46.3.122-128

Annotation:  The Discovery of a Bifacial Industry in Vietnam Technological Development of the Neolithic Pottery at Göytepe (West Azerbaijan) Reconstruction of Extreme Paleoclimatic Events in Northwestern Siberia Using Ancient Wood from Fort On the Construction Features of Wheeled Vehicles in Iran and Mesopotamia (Third to First Millennia B The Adaptation of the Seima-Turbino Tradition to the Bronze Age Cultures in the South of the West Si A Half of a Metal Bipartite Mold of the Seima-Turbino Period from the Upper Irtysh Region Zotino III: An Early Iron Age Metallurgical Center in the Trans-Urals Middle and Late Bronze Age House-Building in the Steppe and Forest-Steppe Altai Artistic Metalwork Found Near the Tomskaya Pisanitsa Cultural Ties Across Taiga and Steppe: Material Culture from the Medieval Lower Angara River and Pro Bronze Plaques from Northern Kyrgyzstan with Representations of Horsemen Kimak and Chu-mu-kun 處木昆: Notes on an Identification Traditional Buryat Burials: Changes and Stereotypes Substitute Offering: An Ob Ugrian Ritual Tradition Surviving in the 20th and Early 21st Century Seventeenth Century Siberia as a Land of Opportunity: Social Mobility Among the Russian Pioneers Deciduous Human Teeth from the Upper Paleolithic Site of Yudinovo, Western Russia Realism of Face Depiction in Portraiture   

Substitute Offering: An Ob Ugrian Ritual Tradition Surviving
in the 20th and Early 21st Century

A.V. Baulo

Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

The substitute offering is a little known ritual practice described by Artturi Kannisto among the northern Khanty and Mansi in the early 1900s, and by the Novosibirsk ethnographers in 1985–2017. Substitution was practiced in case of the offeror’s illness, absence of a requisite domestic animal, or unsuccessful hunt. In such cases, instead of actual animals, their effigies were offered to the guardian spirits—figurines of horses, reindeer, cows, sheep, and cocks cut from birch-bark or cast of lead; alternatively, purchased toys were offered. A substitute could be a pencil drawing on paper, or an embroidered figure of a horse on cloth. The specific substitute was normally prescribed by a shaman; it had to be made only by someone unrelated to and older than the supposed offeror. The effigy and the prayer to the deity, accompanying the offering, are described. Animal effigies were kept in sacral chests, placed into the clothes of guardian spirits, tied into the corners of head cloths and ribbons of blankets to be offered. The combined version of the substitute offering includes hitherto unknown representations of a head cloth, a coat, or a robe, cut from birch-bark.

Keywords: Ritual, substitute offering, horse, reindeer, birch-bark.