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TRADITIONAL COSTUME OF BEREZINO DISTRICT: RECONSTRUCTION EXPERIENCE BASED ON MUSEUM COLLECTIONS AND CONTEMPORARY FIELD STUDIES // Tomsk Journal of Linguistics and Anthropology. 2015. Issue 3 (9). P. 79-89

Traditional Belarusian costume is a unique phenomenon in the culture of Eastern European folks. It had preserved archaic general Slavonic features connected with materials and manufacturing technologies, decoration character and manners of wearing till first decades of XX century. The article concerns the problem of scientific reconstruction of one of traditional costume complexes which was common for the territory of Igumen uezd (county) of Minsk Governorate in the late XIX and early XX century (nowadays it is Berezino district of Minsk region). Till recent period the traditional costume of this area was not widely known, though V. K. Kostko, student of Saint-Petersburg University, collected first data about it as early as in 1905. These materials in the form of a photo album and a small number of museum articles are preserved in the Russian Museum of Ethnography (Saint-Petersburg). Nearly in one hundred years they served as impulse for a deeper research. In 2003–2009 authors of the article conducted a number of expeditions on the territory of Berezino district which enabled them to collect valuable substantial and information materials. Based on the analysis of museum articles, archive photos and materials of contemporary field studies artistic and plastic features of previously unknown local variants of a traditional Belarusian costume were reconstructed. Clothing material collected during expeditions and scientific reconstruction of manners of women’s headdress, belts and other clothing articles helped to represent a traditional Berezino costume in the Museum of Ancient Belarusian Culture (Minsk).

Keywords: traditional costume of Berezino district, V. K. Kostko, the Russian Museum of Ethnography, field studies, reconstruction, the Museum of Ancient Belarusian Culture