FORMATION OF NEW SACRED SPACES AROUND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES IN THE SOUTHERN URALS
Started in 2013 the work on the project “Archaeological sites of the Southern Urals as objects of sacralization” allowed the staff of R. G. Kuzeev Institute for Ethnological Studies of the Ufa Federal Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to identify more than a hundred of archaeological sites bearing some sacralization signs. This is often expressed in the form of carrying out all sorts of rituals, tying ribbons, scarves, offering coins and other symbols. An increase in the number of such facilities has been subsequently previously recorded in the Southern Urals. Information about the sites, initially known only to archaeologists, was given wide publicity, and then it has become a “brand” used by adherents of new religious movements, as well as by representatives of traditional religions. Studies conducted in 2013-2016 allowed establishing the extreme irregularity of the dastribution of “holy places” within the region and identifying some sacral loci that formed mainly around individual burial mounds and burial cemeteries. It was also possible to reveal that the regional specificity of the described processes are as follows: the spontaneity of the formation of a sacred object; the construction of artificial, deliberately false understandings supported by the clergy and authorities. Fairly often, neo-pagans, representatives of new religious movements and marginal religious associations (so-called sects) act as basic conductors of sacralization processes. In recent years, ongoing process of sacralization of sites and the inclusion into him the new archaeological objects have been recorded. The conducted field studies, analysis of scientific literature, groups in social networks etc., allowed identifying the characteristic signs (features) of sacralization of archaeological sites, as well as the main initiators and participants of the process. On the basis of the data obtained, individual models are grouped and subsequently combined into three types of sacralization of archaeological sites that are fairly universal for the Southern Urals.