On August 6, 2025, a scientific seminar titled “Tamga-bearing Altai: Past and Present” will be held in the Katon-Karagai district of East Kazakhstan Region. The seminar is organized based on the results of the grant-funded scientific project AP23486716 – “Sign system and tamgas of the Kazakhs of Altai”, implemented with the support of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan. This seminar is dedicated to interdisciplinary research on the historical and contemporary signs and tamgas of the Kazakhs of Altai.
Topics for discussion:
- Definitions of key concepts: tamga, symbol, sign, and terminological precision;
- Social, legal, and sacred functions of signs and tamgas;
- Historical tamgas of the Kazakhs of Altai and their preservation in the modern ethnographic context;
- Regional features of the sign system and issues of ethnic identification;
- Introduction of signs into scholarly discourse and methods of digital documentation.
Seminar Objective:
To share the results of archaeological and ethnographic expeditions and to disseminate materials collected within the framework of the project to the broader academic community.
Goals:
- To systematize the concepts of “sign” and “symbol” and analyze their functions;
- To identify the role of the sign system in social organization, historical memory, and kinship structures;
- To propose modern approaches to scientific recording and digital documentation of data.
Participants:
Archaeologists, ethnologists, historians, art historians, students of relevant disciplines, and representatives of academic and museum institutions are invited to participate.
Registration contact:
Zhanar Elemesova
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
+7 775 391 6646
We warmly invite all interested specialists to take part in the seminar!
Time: August 6, 2025, 02:00 PM Astana time
Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89763864827?pwd=Fdx4hG86ZspdKbQB9fIbOn8tWbTUCj.1
Meeting ID: 897 6386 4827
Passcode: 473518