ABSTRACT
Though today it is sadly not in use, being reserved for folk song- and dance-ensembles, traditional dress for men is a feature which in its essentials is shared by all the various peoples of the Caucasus, whose autochthonous denizens speak some 40 languages. 1 This paper is concerned with one aspect of their common heritage, namely male dress, and concentrates on variations in Abkhazian and Georgian cultures for the simple reason that these are the ones with which the authors are most familiar. 2 Whilst this paper is not primarily addressed to linguists, we have included a selection of native terms for the various articles of clothing described so that readers may gain a flavour of the differences in, for example, vocabulary found across the native language-families. The most numerous of the Caucasian peoples today are the Georgians — along with the Mingrelians, Laz (who predominantly reside in Turkey) and the Svans, they make up the Kartvelian peoples. The North West Caucasians are the Abkhazian-Abazinians, Circassians and Ubykhs — this last group left the Caucasus when the Russians took control in 1864, preferring a life in the Ottoman Empire, where their language immediately went into the decline that makes it today all but extinct. After the Georgians, the Chechens are the most numerous Caucasians today, and their language-group has the three members: Chechen, Ingush and the endangered Bats. All remaining languages referred to below belong in the final, Daghestanian/North East Caucasian family.
