Return
Objects

Festive costume of a young woman. Mariupol Greeks, 2nd half of the 19th century. Yekaterinoslav Province, Mariupol District, Bolshaya Yenisala village. Greeks: Greeks of Mariupol

Title:

Festive costume of a young woman. Mariupol Greeks, 2nd half of the 19th century. Yekaterinoslav Province, Mariupol District, Bolshaya Yenisala village

Ethnic groups:

Greeks: Greeks of Mariupol

Rubrics:

Costume, women's

Annotation:

In the repository of the Russian Museum of Ethnography, the culture of the Greeks of the Black Sea north coast is represented by materials on the Mariupol Greek group. The collection was formed due to the research efforts of archeologist Nikolai I. Repnikov who in the early 20th century studied the history of early Orthodoxy in Crimea and in Ladoga region. The ethnic group of Mariupol Greeks emerged in 1778-1780 as a result of resettling, under the Russian military control, of a part of the Orthodox Greek population of Crimea to the North coast of the Sea of Azov. In 1779, the settlers founded there the city of Mariupol and 19 rural settlements. The group’s rooting was helped by the prohibition of settling in Mariupol of colonists other than Greeks, which remained in force for half a century. The Greek population existed in Crimea since the classical times as dispersed groups of Greeks of the whole Black Sea region. Like all Black Sea Greeks, the Crimean Greeks formed two speech communities by the Modern Age: the Romans who spoke Greek and the Urums who used Turkic languages. The language of the Crimean Urums is close to the Crimean Tatar language. Both ethnonyms are traced to the name of the Greek population of Byzantium, which was Romans. By many attributes, the culture of the Crimean and Azov Greeks is saturated with the heritage of the medieval Byzantine, Ottoman, and Crimean cultures. The costume of an Azov Greek woman is a result of development of Black Sea Greek traditions influenced by the Crimean Tatar culture. A synthesis of elements is traced in the costume ensemble configuration, design of its components, type of the fabric, and embroidery motifs. An ethno-local feature of the festive costume of a Mariupol Greek woman is her towel-type headwear “periftar” with its many chains and pendants repelling evil forces with their ringing. A bride put it on for the wedding. A young woman wore it almost continuously until her first birth, and then as part of her festive costume. In the everyday life of a married woman, it was replaced by a kerchief. A periftar was passed down from generation to generation; a mother-in-law would give it to her daughter-in-law, which made it an artifact of several epochs.