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Soboleva E., Sorokina S. Terena Indians Dance Costume from the South American Collection of the MAE RAS and New Ethnographic Sources

Elena Soboleva
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the RAS
Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0001-6137-0476
E-mail: soboleva@kunstkamera.ru

 

Sofia Sorokina
Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the RAS
Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
ORCID: 0000-0002-2675-9061
E-mail: msp@kunstkamera.ru

 

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ABSTRACT. To study ethnographic objects, a complete set of materials from the collector is required. Nina L. Pulyakhina-Manizer provided the authors of this article with some materials from the expedition of Heinrich H. Manizer to South America, kept in the family by the descendants of his brother Matvey. The MAE RAS collections allowed the authors to attribute an untitled pencil drawing “Bananal”, depicting a standing (full height) Indian with a painted staff in his hand. H. H. Manizer and Th. A. Fjelstrup arrived to the village of Bananal (Brazil) on October 27–28, 1914, but the collected materials perished in the waters of the river Paraguay. Th. A. Fjelstrup revisited Bananal on November 12–19 and December 4–12, 1914, and in his diary he recorded his recollections of his first visit to the Terena Indians. March 23, 1916, Th. A. Fjelstrup handed over, described and registered at the MAE RAS a Terena ethnographic collection MAE No. 2547. It includes a male festive dance costume, which corresponds to the newly attributed drawing by H. H. Manizer. His notes on the drawing complement the inventory: they explain what materials are used in the costume and the wig, what their coloring is, what dyes the body is covered with (the right side is painted black, the left side is white), and terms in the Terena language are added. Now the MAE RAS got a complete ethnographic set. The objects, collection inventory, field diary, drawing, terminological vocabulary constitute a new source on the festive culture of the Terena of the early 20th century.

 

KEYWORDS: indigenous peoples of South America, Terena, costume, reconstruction, the Second Russian expedition to South America (1914–1915), Heinrich H. Manizer, Theodore A. Fjelstrup

 

FOR CITATION: Soboleva E., Sorokina S. Terena Indians Dance Costume from the South American Collection of the MAE RAS and New Ethnographic Sources. Kunstkamera. 2025. 1 (27): 212–223. (In Russian). DOI: 10.31250/2618-8619-2025-1(27)-212-223

 

* The article was prepared with financial support from the Russian Science Foundation (RSF) within the framework of the project No. 23-28-00962 ‘Polymorphism of Russian scientific expeditions on the eve of the First World War: Historical and ethnographic heritage of Russian natural science expeditions to South Asia and South America’.

 

DOI 10.31250/2618-8619-2025-1(27)-212-223
UDC 069.5:39(8)

 

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