From Mammoth to Miniature: 'Model of a Summer Encampment of the Yakuts' as a Narrative Object

Alison Kay Brown

doi:10.1111/1467-9655.14289

From Mammoth to Miniature: 'Model of a Summer Encampment of the Yakuts' as a Narrative Object

Alison Kay Brown^* (Corresponding Author)

^*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

Classic anthropological accounts of miniature objects have focussed on their spatial and aesthetic dimensions, with more recent work addressing their communicative potential, connections with play, and role in protecting threatened cultural knowledge. This article analyses responses to a miniature landscape model of yhyakh, a festival celebrated in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russian Federation, carved from mammoth ivory in the mid-nineteenth century and now in the British Museum. Based on fieldwork with artists following the model’s loan to the National Art Museum, Yakutsk, and in the British Museum, I argue that while the model’s reduced scale is part of its fascination, its material and temporal dimensions and its cultural associations – its ‘mammothness’ – are inseparable. Mammothness both enhances the model’s narrative capacity and prompts consideration of the temporal dimensions of materials as well as of objects.

Original language	English
Number of pages	21
Journal	Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Early online date	16 Jul 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.14289
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 16 Jul 2025

Bibliographical note

Open access via the Wiley open access agreement

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Tatiana Argounova-Low and Eleanor Peers for their guidance throughout the Narrative Objects project; Asya Gabysheva and the NAM staff for hosting us in Yakutsk; Kirill Grigoriev, Oleg Soloviev, and students from the P.P. Romanov Yakut College of Arts; Jill Maggs Jane Portal and colleagues, and the Trustees of the British Museum for supporting the loan. Lorna Cruickshanks and Lucia Cortelli facilitated the British Museum workshop, and Robert Worley led the practice-based sessions. All three read early drafts of this article. My deepest thanks go to workshop participants and to the many Sakha people who shared their thoughts about the yhyakh model across this project. Tatiana Argounova-Low, Sowparnika Balaswaminathan, Bradley Clements, Maureen Matthews, and Gro Ween commented on earlier versions of this article, while University of Aberdeen colleagues supported the underpinning research in multiple ways. Finally, I thank Elizabeth Hallam, the Editorial team of the JRAI, and two anonymous reviewers for their thorough reading of the manuscript and insightful comments.

Funding

The Narrative Objects project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/M000265/1) and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.

Funders	Funder number
Arts and Humanities Research Council	AH/M000265/1
Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland

Access to Document

10.1111/1467-9655.14289Licence: CC BY

Brown_JRAI_From_Mammoth_To_VoR
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Final published version, 1.61 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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From Mammoth to Miniature: 'Model of a Summer Encampment of the Yakuts' as a Narrative Object

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Funding

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