My Siberian Year, 1914-1915

In May 1914 Polish anthropologist Marie Antoinette Czaplicka set off for Siberia in charge of an expedition to study the reindeer-herding Evenki people. She was twenty-nine years old, had recently completed a diploma in anthropology at Oxford and had started researching the peoples of Siberia, looking particularly at spirit worship and shamanism.
This talk explores the expedition, its extraordinary hardships and the Evenki people that were the focus of research. One of the aims of the expedition was to collect artefacts for both Pennsylvania University Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum, a selection of which are on display in Oxford to mark the centenary.