Memorial Landscapes: From Expeditionary Studies on the Inhul River Area

Author

Bosa Liubov – a Ph.D. in History, a senior researcher at the NASU M. Rylskyi IASFE Ukrainian Ethnological Centre Department

Bosyi Oleksandr – a Ph.D. in History, an associate professor at the Mykhaylo Boychuk Kyiv State Institute of Arts and Crafts and Design

Zhuravliova Anastasiya – a leading ethnologist of the NASU M. Rylskyi IASFE Ukrainian Ethnological Centre Department

Memorial Landscapes: From Expeditionary Studies on the Inhul River Area

Abstract

The article presents some results of an integrated study of several settlements of the Inhul River area, which involved collecting the historical and ethnographic information and analysing the main components of cultural landscape of the region.

One of the priorities of scholars of the Ukrainian Ethnological Centre at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is the researching of Cossack heritage within the frame of entire collective memory of people from various Ukrainian lands. In 2015, an ethnographic expedition was organized into some villages of Bobrynets and Kompaniyivka districts, where an ethnographer Volodymyr Yastrebov has detected and examined former Cossack winter homes. In the article In Zaporizhzhian Remote Places (Kyivan Antiquity, December, 1885), it is submitted the results of his historical and ethnological exploration of settlements along the rivers of Inhul and Suhokliya.

It was scheduled to conduct a comprehensive study of several villages along the Inhul River, which involved the collection of historical and ethnographic information, comparison with the figures recorded by Volodymyr Yastrebov and analysis of the main components of cultural landscape of the region. In the course of the expedition, there were used biographical interviews and focused interviews with different groups of local population. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and there have been defined separate clusters according to the nature of the programme: description of the area, historical representation (of the Cossacks; events of the Soviet times, etc.), local traditional and modern business practices, crafts, rituals, etc.

Based on the data displayed in the Volodymyr Yastrebov’s investigation, there has been concluded that nowadays, it can be efficient to apply the approach of identifying, in collective consciousness of local residents, a modern image of Cossack lands, as they were described as far back as in the late XVIIIth century.

Keywords

Volodymyr Yastrebov, Cossack families, cultural landscape.