Nous sommes heureux d’accueillir le mercredi 11 mars 2020 dans notre Séminaire des études mongoles et sibériennes Valeriya Gazizova (MIASU, Université de Cambridge), de 14h à 16h, au 54 boulevard Raspail, 75006 Paris, dans la salle 17 (sous-sol).

Elle nous parlera des cairns rituels dans le cadre d’une intervention intitulée “Sacred Heights in the Topography of Depression: Ovaa Kurgans and Their Agency in the Kalmyk Buddhist Landscape“

In contrast to other Mongolian areas, the ritual structures of stones, wood, scarves, etc. widely known across Inner Asia as ovoo (Mon. oboo; Tib. lha tho, la rtse; Kalm. ovaa) were not historically vivid on the Kalmyk steppes and are far from being ubiquitous in Kalmykia today. Since their migration to the Northern Caspian, the Kalmyks have attributed the ritual, political and functional roles of the ovoo cairns to steppe kurgans or ancient burial mounds that abound throughout the North Caucasus and Caspian Depression, the oldest dating from the early Bronze Age.
Based on periodic fieldwork from 2011 to 2018, this talk is concerned with Kalmyk terminology, certain ritual practices and discourses constructing the steppe burial mounds as reference points of reinvented sacred geographies and histories. Focusing on several examples of particular ovaa kurgans, I shall present popular narratives, archeological findings and public events in connection with the chosen sites in order to explore how these landscape entities are conceptualized as powerful agents of the Kalmyk Buddhist and ethno-cultural renewal. Whether ovaa kurgans can be situated within the category of the sacred ovoo cairns of Inner Asia or whether they present a separate type of ritual structure is another set of questions the talk raises.

En espérant vous voir nombreux,
Isabelle Charleux, Grégory Delaplace, Sandrine Ruhlmann et Virginie Vaté