Ust-Tsilma game “The Sheep”as part of the cultural heritage of the Lower Pechora
Introduction: the folk game with sheep joint bones «The Sheep» is the property of the cultural heritage of the Ust- Tsilma people - residents of the Lower Pechora. It expresses the originality and color of the North Russian traditional culture, which absorbed elements of the cultures of neighboring peoples - the Komi and Nenets having strong cultural and historical ties with the Ob Ugrians.Objective: to present a structural description of the traditional game of the Ust-Tsilma people «The Sheep» through the prism of cross-cultural relations in games with joint bones of animals and their reflection in culture of the Khanty and Mansi peoples.Research materials: field materials of the authors with the involvement of language examples on the topic.Results and novelty of the research: the article presents a structural description of the folk game “The Sheep”, which discusses the positions of game bones, the rules and the course of the game with its main stages. For comparison, information is provided from other publications about this game, which allows us to judge the degree of preservation of this game tradition in the first quarter of the XXI century.The game «The Sheep» recorded by the authors is published for the first time and is the most complete version compared to the published information about it. It is recorded from a concrete person - a keeper of folk knowledge. Neither our informant nor her relatives acted as a source for ethnographic research.