Nadiia Kovalchuk

Candidate of Historical Sciences (PhD), Scientific Secretary, State Scientific Center for Protection of Cultural Heritage from Technological Disasters, Kyiv, Ukraine.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1240-8308

E-mail: kovalchuk69@ukr.net

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Keywords: Easter cycle, mapping of ritual phenomena, territorial spatial aspect, traditional calendar, Middle Polissia of Ukraine, Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

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Abstract

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The work is devoted to a comprehensive study of the Easter cycle traditional rituals of the middle of the 20th century on the territory of the Middle Polissia of Ukraine. General regional and local features of calendar traditions timed to the main dates of the Easter cycle are determined based on the principle of distinguishing structural elements inherent in ritual phenomena and a comparative analysis of their varieties. A descriptive characteristic of the geography of customs, ritual actions and their motivation, attributes, loci, prohibitions is given, and in some cases their areas are presented graphically in the form of maps compiled based on the results of working mapping. When studying traditional rituals, their internal structure, chronological section and geographical distribution at the time of fixation are considered. This contributes to the understanding of ritual phenomena in the spatial dimension.

The study is based on data collected in 350 villages during ethnographic expeditions that took place during 2001–2021. The results of the mapping show that in the middle of the 20th century, in the traditional manner of life, the ritual of the Easter cycle preserved the relative homogeneity of the content as a whole, but its structure is characterized by the diversity of its components and the variability of their distribution within the studied territory. Based on the totality of structural differences and their geography, in the Middle Polissia the north-eastern complex of Easter ritual traditions stands out. This complex covers the territory of the current Chornobyl Exclusion Zone

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References

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