Synthetic Approach to the Study of Ethnic Identity and the Concept of Cognitive History: Measuring the Source and Reading Symbolic Meanings

This article presents one of the angles of studying ethnic identity within the framework of the author's synthetic approach, which is based on the idea of ethnogenesis as a process of reconstructing (constant awareness and rethinking) the primary essential attitudes of an ethnic group in spatial and temporal aspects. The author focuses on studying the material culture of an ethnic community through reading the symbols of physical cultural objects using the methodology of the cognitive-historical approach of O.M. Medushevskaya. The application of this approach interprets the object of material culture of a traditional society as a reflection of a complex of spiritual (including sacred) meanings of the cultural code of the ethnic community, encrypted in the symbolism of the object under study. In this context, the study of the object appears in the format of decoding, implemented through an appeal to the goals and process of creating the object, the personality of its creator and the time of creation, the expected recipient of the manufactured object, as well as many other aspects. As a result of the article, the author presents the potential of applying the methodology of cognitive history to a wide variety of objects of material heritage.