Sibirica

This article documents over five years of exploratory work digitizing glass plate negatives across Siberia dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article explains the technical and cultural challenges governing access to these collections and offers a preliminary analysis of the themes common to this collection of over 4,000 images. The article is accompanied by a photo essay, which provides a sample of the material and the attributions, as well as references to electronic resources for the full collection and guides to further digitization.

Since the early 1990s the Altai Republic has been experiencing a dispute about its archaeological heritage. This article deals with one aspect of it—the discrepancy between a local understanding of archaeological monuments as belonging to the direct ancestors of present day Altaians, and an expert view of many historians, archaeologists and physical anthropologists who see no relation between the two. Drawing on the work of Halemba and on Ingold's distinction between relational and genealogical models of indigeneity, this article describes the controversy as feeding on different concepts of "Altaian-ness." Original data nevertheless show that Ingold's sharp distinction between the two models is better understood as complementarity in the Altaian context. Historical data furthermore suggest that such complementarity is a principle that has long been in operation, visible, for example, when we look at identity labels preceding "Altaian."

The paper describes the contemporary economic and social situation of the Uilta, an indigenous people on the island of Sakhalin. Particular emphasis is put on the legal and practical conditions for reindeer herding and fishing, the availability of labour resources, and the contribution of ethnically defined enterprises to securing Uilta cultural survival. Field research in 2001-2004 disclosed how the implementation of rights to land and resources works, or fails to work, on the local level. Through the analysis of the Uilta case, this report contributes to scientific debates on access to land and resource use.

Andrzej Weber, M. Anne Katzenberg, and Olga I. Goriunova, eds., Khuzhir-Nuge XIV, A Middle Holocene Hunter-Gatherer Cemetery on Lake Baikal, Siberia: Osteological Materials Margaret Streeter

Georg Wilhelm Steller, Steller’s History of Kamchatka: Collected Information Concerning the History of Kamchatka, Its Peoples, Their Manners, Names, Lifestyle, and Various Customary Practices. Dean Littlefield, Steller’s Island: Adventures of a Pioneer Naturalist in Alaska Timothy Heleniak

Alexander B. Dolitsky, Staraia Rossiia v sovremennoi Amerike: Russkie staroobriadtsy na Aliaske David Scheffel

Sew’jan I. Weinshtein, Geheimnisvolles Tuwa: Expeditionen in das Herz Asiens Aline Ehrenfried

A.A. Khisamutdinov, Tri stoletiia izucheniia Dalnego Vostoka (materialy k biobibliografii issledovatelei), vypusk 1 (1639–1939) Patricia Polansky

Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Richard Dauenhauer, and Lydia T. Black, eds., Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 and 1804 Alexander Dolitsky

Ingeborg Hauenschild, Lexikon jakutischer Tierbezeichnungen Brigitte Pakendorf