Book Review V.V.GORBACHEVA “Ceremonials and Festivals of the Koryak”, Sankt-Peterburg,《Nauka》,2004. 15lp.

Abstract

The author, the chief of Siberia department in the Russian Museum of Ethnography in St. -Petersburg, dedicated her long term survey of the Koryak in Kamchatka Peninsula to this publication. Referring mainly to the most fundamental work by W. JOCHELSON (1908) and those by Soviet researchers as well, she gives detailed descriptions and analysis of the ceremonials and festivals of the Koryak. Her field survey was carried out among the Reindeer-Koryak, Maritime-Koryak of different regions of Koryak Avtonomnyi Okrug in 1976, 1979 and 2002. With her own observation and data from the informants the author successfully fulfilled and gave another interpretation to some problems that were not discussed enough by JOCHELSON and others. The book has five chapters: 1) Historiography of the Koryak ceremonial rites, 2) Festivals of Production (festivals common to the settled- and nomadic Koryak; festivals of the settled Koryak; festivals of the nomadic Koryak), 3) Ceremonials of family life (Marriage, Child-birth, Notions on illness and its treatment, Funeral and mourning), 4) A retrospective analysis of the Koryak ceremonials and festivals, 5) Contemporary situation of the ceremonials of family life. Through the description of the ceremonials and festivals of different groups　of the Koryak the author was eager to lighten and trace the habits and/or rituals　of “hunters” of the northern area. And as the conclusion she gives consent to　define the Koryak society as“hunters-reindeer breeders of Tundra”　type that　is now applied to many reindeer-breeding peoples of the circumpolar region.