ABSTRACT
The role of female shamanism in humankind’s history is not yet completely clear. On the one hand, there is a concept shared by many scholars about its more ancient existence. This theory, like many others of positivistic approach, has been criticized as it does not demonstrate solid proof. On the other hand, post-modernistic studies also do not propose any solid theory about female shamanism in history and do not give us any tools for understanding this phenomenon.
However, the turn of the millennium is an important point of examining the situation. In Siberia, it is a moment when the generation belonging to the so-called traditional culture was the last one that did not pass through systematic school education. Old people in remote areas born before WWII had maximum of four classes of school education. Despite new socialistic contexts, their formation was determined by traditional culture rather than by the newly established cultural matrix. That’s why materials of this period are of great importance. This point I regard as a turning point, because the next generation represents a completely different type of personality.
In this chapter, field materials (collected over 23 years, from 1985 to 2008, in Southern Siberia amongst Turkic-speaking populations, namely Altais, Khakasses, Tuvas and Shors) and published sources of this period will be discussed from gender point of view. An important issue is the predominance of female shamans of this period, contrary to the previous documented decades when male shamans were in the majority.
