Golubets, gravehouse, and gate: Old Russian traditions and the wooden mortuary architecture in Russia, Siberia, and the North Pacific
Date
2018-07-18
Authors
Currier, Janice Arlee
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Abstract
The cemetery in the Tanaina (Dena'ina) village of Eklutna, Alaska, features brightly
coloured miniature houses constructed of wood to mark graves, rather than using simple crosses or
stones. These gravehouses give the cemetery the appearance of a village for the dead. Most of the
structures have a Russian Orthodox cross at one end, and this has led most who see the cemetery
to conclude that the combination represents a synthesis of Athabascan traditions, in the form of the
gravehouse, and Russian Orthodox Christianity, as represented by the cross.
As this study will demonstrate, there are various problems with this proposal in that
gravehouses are found among groups which are neither Orthodox nor Athabascan, yet have
features of construction and ornament in common. Furthermore, research reveals that gravehouses
were not part of the funerary traditions of the First Nations and Native Americans where such
structures are found today, but have been used for centuries in European Russia. Although
gravehouses were forbidden there at various times, social and religious dissidents, such as some
accords of Old Believers, continued to use them and may have introduced this form of folk
architecture to some groups of aboriginal Siberian peoples who, with Russians, may have
encouraged the use of the gravehouse, or golubets, in the Northern Pacific regions of North America. The ornament and symbolism of the gravehouses in the Northern Pacific share similarities with those on the other side of the Bering Strait, supporting the notion of a common origin.
This study seeks additional supporting evidence, supported by some documents and oral traditions, that Old Believers and other Russian Sectarians may have been among the Russians
who explored and settled in the Northern Pacific region during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. This possibility provides a deeper understanding of the origin and meaning of
gravehouses in the North Pacific, and presents new interpretations of the probable significance and
contributions of aboriginal Siberians and Russian dissidents in the history of Russian America.
Description
Keywords
Alaska, cemetaries, gravehouses, British Columbia, Russia, Siberia