The incense-burner | ScienceGate

The gulf between intellectuals and peasants, in which the latter are perceived to be a drag on the modernization led by the former, is usually selfaggrandizement. When, as in China, peasants have the ambivalent status of being the base of revolution and the drag on political reform in the direction of democracy, anthropologists are in a good position to challenge the intellectuals’ pretensions. But we don’t. This article asks why, points out the ways in which we can, and then refutes the notion that Chinese peasants have no democratic tradition with an example. It is an example of self-organization around an incense burner, a religious tradition of territorial association. I put it to the test of a number of concepts of democracy, most of which it passes. But its leaders are chosen by divine selection, raising the question whether this is a form of benign charisma rather than standard electoral democracy. The institution persists into the present of the People’s Republic of China and the government of Taiwan, where it functions as a public good, a test of local loyalty, and a moral basis by which the conduct of state officials and elected representatives are judged. It is a civil institution, but now the issue is whether it will last or be soaked up by central state cultural policies. Whatever the answer, the example also throws down a challenge to anthropologists in other regions to explore ‘peasant’ self-organization and cultural resources for democracy and civil judgement.

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Incense burners and altar dishes of the Sargatka Culture

VESTNIK ARHEOLOGII ANTROPOLOGII I ETNOGRAFII ◽

10.20874/2071-0437-2021-53-2-6 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 66-82

Author(s):

V.A. Zakh

Keyword(s):

Western Siberia ◽

Forest Steppe ◽

Large Area ◽

Flat Bottom ◽

Steppe Region ◽

Special Means ◽

Inner Surface ◽

Air Intake ◽

Main Item ◽

Incense Burner

The paper concerns the so-called incense burners and small altar dishes found in the burial complexes of the Sargatka Culture in the forest-steppe region of the Western Siberia, as well as in the burials of the Cis-Urals nomads of the 4th–2nd c. BC, which were used for burning and incensing of various substances. Compilation of materials allows forming a clearer view on the possible function of these objects, which is debatable amongst the researchers. The incense burners are small cylindrical stone or pottery vessels with considerable amount of tal-cum in the pottery clay. The altar dishes represent round, oval or subrectangular objects made of stone and clay with or without legs. The cylinder-shaped incense burners and altar dishes are, apparently, similar in function to each other. The absence of a high rim on the latter is compensated by a large area of the dish itself. The volume of the incensed substance would be nearly the same in both types of the burners, while sustaining burning on the altar-dishes would not require special means, such as wall penetrations alike those in the cylindrical incense burners. Few preserved burials contain incense burners alongside other, in our opinion related, objects — flat-bottom vessels, sometimes with stone bases, which allows econstruction of the implement in its assembled form and suggestion of a method of its application. The main item was an incense burner — a container of a cylindrical or conical shape, usually with through-holes in the wall to allow air intake inside the ware, sometimes having nip-ple-shaped protrusions on the inner surface of the bottom increasing the surface area of contact with the incense substance. The incense burner would have been placed in a flat-bottom jar filled with smoldering embers and installed on a fire-resistant base. The studied objects and their handling resemble the ceremonial described by Herodotus as a ritual purification amongst the Scythians. However, in our opinion, it cannot be ruled out that they could have been used in the rituals involving hallucinogenic substances, performed with the aim of prophesizing, divination, to communicate with gods and spirits, which were practised by people of the Sarmatian and Sargatian (at least in the western part of the area) Cultures and administered, most likely, by special, elected persons. When those persons die, the implements would be placed into their burials as a grave goods.

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