ABSTRACT
Up to the beginning of the 1990s, experts on Gorno-Badakhshan had to accept the fact that developing an ethnography of the Pamiris would soon be a task for cultural historians. Yes, one could assume that certain traditional religious elements would continue to be perpetuated over a long period of time. Yet no one could have expected that outdated agricultural, handicraft or irrigation techniques would still play a recognisable role in GBAO. Anyone wishing to predict that these relicts would retain any economic importance for the future would have been laughed out of the room.
