Paper short abstract:

This paper compares the mobilization of offering rites and archaeological discourses to protect Buriat sacred sites in Pribaikal’e.While once-feared archaeologists are increasingly bound in ritual ties of reciprocity with local spirits, illegal slate miners now constitute a more dangerous incursion.

Paper long abstract:

Among the Western Buriats of Pribaikal'e analogical patterns of reciprocity can be observed in ritualized hospitality practices in the home and annual rites of offering made at the ancestral homeland. On different scales corporeal and incorporeal persons are bound into reciprocal relations through formalized sharing of meat, milk products and vodka at both household hearths and 'clan hearths'. In larger rites the guest-host relationship is ambiguous with master spirits of place designated 'khoziain', the same title as a head of household, though the rites are described as 'hosting' the ancestors.

Many clan rites take place on sacred mountains, several of which are home to ancient pre-Mongol petroglyphs. The local Buriat population acknowledge through offering rites the spirits of those predecessors in their homeland. Archaeological excavations have consequently been a source of vexation for local shamanists who believe that the sprits will be disturbed.

A recent alliance has been formed, however, between local elders and archaeologists in trying to gain state protection for the sacred mountain of Mankhai from the illegal slate mining that has destroyed many of the petroglyphs.

While local shamans engage in statist discourses over the preservation of sites, archaeologists increasingly participate in offering rites. These different place-making discourses and practices problematize and redefine who are 'masters' of the land, who are bound to the land in reciprocal relations with its 'masters', and what kind of incomers might be defined as dangerous to the material constituion of sacred sites and practices of 'binding'.