The goals of this research project are the consideration, analysis and interpretation of the archaeological materials for an understanding of the role of animals (wild and domesticated) for Bohai and Jurchen peoples, who lived in the modern Russian Far East during the medieval period. In my research I focus on these points:
- Problems of usage and identification of domestic animals in the Bohai and Jurchen societies.
- Analysis of the osteological materials to understand the role of the animal rituals, which dealt with the sacral social components (like, sacrifice and other).
- The question of how Bohai and Jurchen people considered different kinds of animals in their life.
- Specifics of hunting and fishery in Bohai and Jurchen societies: reasons, methods and rituals.
- The influence of the Jurchen people’s understanding of animals on the culture of the modern aboriginal population of the Russian Far East.
- Interaction of the understanding about specific kinds of animals in Jurchen and neighboring societies.
- Problems about those kinds of animals, who existed in Bohai and Jurchen periods, but disappeared later. The role of humans in the ecology of the region.