Funerary practices, human biology and cultural diffusion in Yakutia (16th-19th centuries)

• Main Author: Duchesne, Sylvie
• Other Authors: Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives (Inrap), Centre d'anthropologie et de génomique de Toulouse (CAGT), Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier (UT3), Université de Toulouse (UT)-Université de Toulouse (UT)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Université Toulouse 3 - Paul Sabatier, Eric Crubézy, Alexandre Riberon
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: French
• Published: HAL CCSD 2020
• Subjects: Eastern Siberia; Cultural phylogeny; Funerary archaeology; Biological anthropology; Sibérie orientale; Phylogénie culturelle; Archéologie funéraire; Anthropologie biologique; BSB -Biologie; [SHS.ANTHRO-SE]Humanities and Social Sciences/Social Anthropology and ethnology; [SHS.ANTHRO-BIO]Humanities and Social Sciences/Biological anthropology; iakoutes; Yakut; Yakutia; Yakuts; Siberia
• Online Access: https://hal.science/tel-04192273; https://hal.science/tel-04192273/document; https://hal.science/tel-04192273/file/Duchesne_Pratiques%20funeraires,%20diffusion%20culturelle_Iakoutie.pdf

Study, on the basis of 162 characters from 179 perfectly preserved frozen burials, of the cultural evolution of the settlement of Yakutia from the 16th century to the 19th century. The Yakuts, people from north-eastern Siberia, Turkic speaking, cattle and horse breeders, are surrounded by Siberian speaking people, reindeer herders. Divided into several tribes before the Russian colonization, they will experience in contact with the Russians a «golden age» before being assimilated into the Russian Orthodox culture in the 19th century. Their frozen tombs, with intact cultural and biological data, together with historical data and this particular ecological context place their cultural evolution as an exceptional school case for human-environment interaction and for the human and social sciences. After a descriptive study of the characters, multivariate, descriptive and decisional studies, comparing differences between ages, sexes, lineages, periods, geographical groups, are carried out; it is followed by a phylogenetic analysis. The first analyses demonstrate the economic and religious changes linked to chronological evolution, while phylogeny provides hypotheses on cultural transmission, differentiated according to sex. A phase of synthesis allows us to confirm the southern origins of the Yakut culture, to identify its mechanisms of adaptation, then of evolution in the face of Russian colonization, and finally to recognize its modes of transmission and diffusion that have made it evolve from a traditional way of life to a Russian orthodox way of life. Étude, sur la base de 162 caractères issus de 179 tombes gelées parfaitement conservées, de l’évolution culturelle du peuplement de la Iakoutie du XVIe siècle au XIXe siècle. Les Iakoutes sont un peuple du nord-est de la Sibérie, de langue turque, éleveurs de bovins et de chevaux, entourés de populations de langue sibérienne, éleveurs de rennes. Dispersés en plusieurs tribus avant la colonisation russe, ils vont connaître au contact des Russes un « âge d’or » ...