Wednesday, July 22, 2009

The Traditional Tush Family

The Traditional Tush Family - Structure and Economic Activity
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The basic unit of Caucasian society is the extended family, a grouping of several lineages collectively owning and exploiting a same estate. In Georgia, the extended family is particularly found in the western mountains among the Svans and in the east among the Tush, the Mokhev (inhabitants of Khevi), and the Pshav. Even as late as the early twentieth century it was not rare to find family communities composed of more than forty members, living under one roof, cultivating and exploiting collective property, and placed under the authority of the oldest man. Here is, for example, the composition of a Tush family, which remained undivided until 1913; the Djidjuriani, from the village of Shenak'o, were twenty-five individuals: the "Father of the House" (mamasakhlisi, i.e. the patriarch) and his wife, an unmarried son, five other sons and their wives, their eleven children, and the wife of one of the latter. They collectively owned a thousand two hundred heads of cattle (ovin and caprin), ten cows, a pair of oxen, and thirty horses, and they cultivated an area of land equivalent to fifteen "dailies" (dghiuri, i.e. a surface of land which regularly required a day's work to be cultivated).
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In another village, the Ganaani family was made up of three generations, a total of nineteen family members, of which ten were men. They owned between a thousand and a thousand five hundred heads of small cattle (ovin and caprin), eight cows, a pair of oxen, and six "dailies" of land. The elder son was in charge of the entire estate. Of his three younger brothers, two were responsible for the so-called "interior" or "inside" farming, i.e. they tended the family's fields, and the third was responsible for making cheese and other milk products. Among the next, younger generation, the son and the nephews of the family head (his son and the six sons of his younger brothers) devoted themselves to pastoral activities, helped by eight shepherds - seasonal workers foreign to the community and in the family's employ. Livestock farming was the most important part of the Tush economy. Tending to the needs of the family's cattle required fifteen men, whereas only two could acquit themselves of the "inside" farming. This disproportion explains the existence of a practice which differentiates the Tush from the other mountain tribes: almost all the male members of the family were needed to care for the cattle; consequently, it was the women who tended to the fields - ploughing and sowing them, etc. When this seasonal work was over, they devoted themselves to their main activity: the production of wool, weaving, the making of clothes, etc. Female work was organized by and under the direction of the "Mistress of the House" (dedasakhlisi, i.e. the matriarch); this role automatically belonged to the wife of the oldest man: the wife of the "Father of the House" (1st generation) or, if she died, the wife of the elder brother (2nd generation); the woman's age was never taken into consideration - only that of her husband. And as for the role of patriarch, it always belonged to the oldest man.
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The matriarch was also responsible for another important task: she was in charge of the accumulation of unconsumed goods
- milk products, meat, grain - and had to see to their storage and preservation. These reserves were called the saodjakho, "for the family", and were destined to remain intact as the family's private wealth, and were not to be shared. In cases of absolute necessity, part of this wealth could be used by the family, but always collectively. This treasury also included sums of money, which were sometimes considerable, and which were also placed under the authority of the "Mistress of the House". Among the Tush and the Pshav, the profits resulting from the sale of livestock or products were hoarded, and not reinvested. Gains were thus buried forever and none would profit. Rapiel Eristavi commented upon this in 1855:
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"This branch of agriculture [livestock farming] provides people with relatively important profits; the monies resulting from the sale of hides, of wool, of cheese and milk, are carefully entered in the families books. Among the Pshav and the Tush one may meet with well-off families who own forty or fifty thousand roubles, among which one may still find fifty kopeck coins, which are now no longer in use. This phenomenon is unsurprising, for the mountaineers - instead of reinvesting their money and replacing it into the economy - bury it in the earth."
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This practice is important, for it shows to what extent mountain societies remained outside of the merchant economy, which was nonetheless penetrating most Georgian provinces. As in most archaic civilizations, the mountain tribes had no conception of goods being able to bear another value than their intrinsic value. As money was only defined by its value as a means of exchange, it was condemned to remain foreign to their economic system, for these peoples essentially provided for their own needs without resorting to commerce. Gaps in production were filled by barter and - possibly - pillage, whose economic role would merit closer study.
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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Pshavi

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a view of pshavi from google earth
(the valley running north-south on the left-hand side is that of the pshavis aragvi river;
the 12 villages of pshavi are in the perpendicular valley, running east-west)
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the turn to pshavi off the main road north from tbilisi towards barisakho and khevsureti
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I recently (June 2009) went to Pshavi for the first time, in the company of Thomas Wier, an aspiring linguist here in Georgia to study kartvelian dialects (Tush, Pshav, Khevsur, Mokhevian, etc.). We were meant to go with someone from the Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics in Tbilisi, but this being Georgia, it never happened, and Thomas and I decided to head up to Pshavi on our own.
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Although we got no further than the village of Shupakho, we did get to meet Lazare Elizbarashvili, the
khevisberi (or "Valley Elder") of the Sacred Shine of Iaqsar.
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lazare elizbarashvili, the valley elder of shuapkho and guardian of the shrine of iaqsar
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the sacred shrine of iaqsar (hidden in the trees up on the right)
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Iaqsar is the khati of the village of Shuapkho, a pagan divinity (winged, in some narratives) in the Pshav-Khevsur pantheon, the sworn brother of Kopala, like him a slayer of devi, devils.
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To download the locations of the 12 villages of Pshavi for Google Earth, please click here, and download the ".kmz" file.
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Here is a recording of Lazare Elizbarashvili's father Ioseb, his predecessor as khevisberi of the Sacred Shrine of Iaqsar, officiating during the feast (dgheoba) of Iaqsar in the 1980s.
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(This prayer was recorded from Mirian Khutsishvili's ethnographic film Pshavi.)
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