TO THE PROBLEM OF THE CULTURAL SELF-IDENTIFICATION OF ANDRONS
The system of cultural codes of human communities and the mechanisms of self-determination of the individual human beings in them has long been problematic. This is a everyday life problem for a person. This is also a problem for the researcher, whose interests lie in the existential properties of human nature. The essence of this problem can be summarized as a permanent interaction of three antagonistic processes. The first – the formation of cultural skills from early childhood, which are fixed at the level of reflections. The second – the formation of cultural skills for the communication in other cultural environments. And the third – the aspiration to preserve own unique “Ego” with respect to any culture. The paper investigates the possibility of capturing in archaeological material of not only the information about the large societies (archaeological cultures or cultural-historical communities), but also the information about individuals, albeit nameless ones. The hard canons of traditions suppress individuality, but can in an unexpected way highlight it. It may occur in an attempt of self-identification of a man, who found himself in another cultural environment, through proprietary codes. For example, an unusual object in the grave is a sign of personal history. Or if the subject is from another culture, the burial complex with quite ordinary objects may represent the sign of intravital psychological and cultural duality of the buried. The buried who as such has not been released from the memories of the culture lost. Hypothetical constructs in the paper are based on the facts of inclusions from other cultures in the funeral complex of Alakul repository Mitan in Central Kazakhstan.
Keywords: cultural code, archaeology, funeral complex, ceramic, existence, self-identification
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Issue: 2, 2013
Series of issue: Issue 2
Rubric: ANTHROPOLOGY
Pages: 115 — 118
Downloads: 590