Traditions of Far Eastern jewelry in the costume of the peoples of Amur in the 19th – beginning of 20th centuries

Abstract

Jewelry of the Amur peoples is an important element of traditional culture, formed under the influence of aesthetic ideals and reflecting the commonality of the Tungus-Manchurian world. Despite the vastness of the territories and the appearance of new political borders in the 19th century, the semantics of jewelry of traditional costume was understandable both to the aboriginal population of the Ussuri Region and to the urbanized stratum of the Manchus who mastered the cities of Qing China. The research is based on items from the stock collections of the Arsenyev Museum of the History of the Far East, some of which were not previously presented to the wide public. Today, it is the museum collections formed in the 19th – first half of the 20th centuries that have become the basis for studying the technology and semantics of jewelry of the peoples of the Far East. In the production of jewelry that existed among the indigenous peoples of the Far East, a wide variety of technologies were used, and the place of production depended on their complexity. Either they were professional jewelry manufactories of Manchurian China, or Nanai and Udege craftsmen who worked in the camps. And in this context, we can talk about broad trade relations that existed due to the turnover of jewelry. The durability of the materials used in the creation of works of jewelry art has become an important factor in the continuity of cultural paradigms with the change of generations. The jewelry complex that developed in the Far East in the Middle Ages lasted for several centuries, survived a series of state formations and survived until the 20th century, until the civilizational scrapping replaced the traditional way of life of hunters and fishermen, along with the costume, from everyday use.