The purpose of this paper is to clarify the trade activity of the ancestors of the indigenous peoples of the Lower Amur Basin in the 18th and 19th centuries and to reexarnine the discourse of their society and culture in classical ethnography. They have usually been described as hunters, fishermen, or collectors of wild plants in much ethnography since the late 19th century, and the primitiveness of their foraging life style, fishing and hunting techniques, and social structure has often been underlined by anthropologists, ethnologists, and historians. The policies of the former Soviet Union to rescue them from the poverty caused by their primitive level of production was based on such discourse of the scholars.
However, were they really poor? Were their life style, culture, and society really primitive? Historical documents written by Japanese explorers and investigators in the 18th and 19th centuries, Mogami Tokunai, Mamiya Rinzo, Nakamura Koichiro, and so on, indicate that they had a highly sophisticated culture and a complex society. For example, modern ethnologists often underline the fact that the peoples of the Lower Amur were ichthyophagi, and that a piece of dried fish occupied the same position as a piece of bread in European meals. On the contrary, Japanese investigators said that their staple food was a cup of boiled millet, usually put in a small bowl of china or lacquer ware. Though ethnologists often described fish skin coats in detail, most of their clothes were made of cotton, and their ritual costumes were even made of silk. It is a fact that millet, cotton, silk, china, and lacquer ware were not their original products, but Chinese or Japanese ones which they obtained through trade with Chinese and Japanese. It is also a fact, however, that these things occupied an important position in their cultural complex. It is an injustice for researchers not to properly evaluate them and not to pay any attention to the trade activity.
The trade activity of the ancestors of the peoples of the Lower Amur in the 18th and 19th centuries was called "Santan trade" by Japanese investigators of the same centuries. "Santan" was an ethnonym of the people of the Lower Amur, which had often been used as a name of the ancestors of the indigenous people of this region as a whole. It was Mamiya Rinzo who clarified who the Santan people were. In his investigation in 1809 and 1810 he found out that the Santan lived between the villages of "Uruge" (Ырриlater Russian village "MaксимГолький") and "Poru" (Пол, later Ul'chi village "ЧёрныйЯр"), that they called themselves "Mango" (this is the same self denotation as "Mangguni"); and that their neighbors upstream along the river were called "Korudekke" (Goldok) and those downstream were called "Sumerenkuru". The range of habitation, the self denotation "Mango", and the linguistic materials indicate that the Santan people were ancestors of the Tungus-speaking peoples of the Lower Amur today, especially the Ul'chi (Olcha) and a part of the lower Nanai (Goldi). The Santan trade has long been studied as a theme of historical studies of Northern Japan. However, though many facts have been clarified from the historical point of view, historians have long overlooked an important one namely that it was trade that kept the levels of life and culture of the peoples of the Lower Amur and Sakhalin in the 18th and 19th centuries higher than those described in ethnography. This is because the historians could not evaluate the function and role of trade activity in the society and culture of the indigenous peoples, because their point of view was usually set not on the side of the indigenous traders, but on that of authors or editors of literary sources, who were often government bureaucrats.
This paper is one of my experiments, in which I try to describe the historical events of the peoples of the Lower Amur and Sakhalin such as the Santan trade from the point of view of those who were described in the literary sources. The final end of the experiments is a diachronic review of the society and culture of the peoples of this region, and I would like to sweep away such images as "primitive", "uncivilized" or "natural people", created by anthropologists and ethnologists since the end of the 19th century.
As a result of an examination of the historical literature of Japanese investigators, regional government archives of the Qing dynasty (the last dynasty of China), reports of ethnological researches by Russian ethnologists, and my own field data, I can point out the following characteristics of the trade activity of the peoples of the Lower Amur and Sakhalin:
1) The main peoples who were enthusiastically engaged in the Santan trade were the Santan and the Sumerenkuru (the ancestors of the Amur Nivkh), and some differences were apparent in their trading styles. For example, the Santan people did their business on the main traffic route of this region, which went from Lower Sungari to the southern end of Sakhalin through Amur and the western coast of Sakhalin, they played a role of mediator between Japanese and Chinese, and obtained a large profit from this business. On the contrary, the Sumerenkuru traders extended their business area to the tributaries of the Lower Amur, the coast of the sea of Okhotsk and the eastern coast of Sakhalin, and played a role of distributor of Chinese and Japanese commodities among the peoples of these areas.
2) Usually the Santan and Sumerenkuru traders did not fix a business place but often went round their customers, being engaged in sable hunting. However, the temporary branch office of the Qing dynasty, which was constructed at Kiji or Deren and opened every summer, often played the role of a periodical market, in which the Santan and Sumerenkuru traders did their business not only with Manchu officials and merchants but also with other indigenous traders.
3) The trading crew of Santan or Sumerenkuru traders consisted of several persons from a village led by a hala i da (chief of a clan) or gashan da (head of village) nominated by the Qing dynasty.
4) The conceptual classification of trade and tribute was recognized by the Santan and Sumerenkuru peoples.
5) Credit sale was the main custom of the Santan and Sumerenkuru traders in the 18th and 19th centuries. They applied it to trade with all customers without exception. The business with the Ainu, who, it was said, suffered from their debt to the Santan traders, was not a special one to cheat them of their property.
6) The trade activity of the peoples of the Lower Amur and Sakhalin swung between trade and tribute (in other words, between economy and politics), influenced by the change of political conditions of this region and the location of each people.
6-1) In the 18th century, when the administrative system of the Qing dynasty was under construction on the Lower Amur and Sakhalin, tribute was superior to trade, because the regional administration of the dynasty was enthusiastically intervening in the social life of the people to establish the sovereignty of the dynasty among them. After the end of the 18th century, however, when the dynasty was losing its political power over the people of this region, the position of trade and tribute was reversed.
6-2) The relation between trade and tribute was different among the people according to their location. I can classify them into three groups. The first is the people who lived on the main route of the trade, comparatively far from the regional centers of the countries (China and Japan), Le. the Santan and Sumerenkuru (the ancestors of the Ul'chi and Amur Nivkh), They could take advantage of their location to intensively conduct their trading business without administrative intervention. The second group is those who lived on the main route of the trade, near to the regional center of the countries, Le. the Korudekke (the ancestors of the Nanai) and the Ainu. Their location was too close to the center to be free from the governmental power of the countries, though their status was higher than that of the people of the first group. It was more important for them to accomplish various obligations than to be engaged in free trade. The third group is those who lived far from both the main trade route and the regional center of the countries, Le. the ancestors of the Sakhalin Nivkh, Uilta (Oroks); Orochi, Negidars, and Evenki hunters. They were providers of fur and consumers of Chinese and Japanese products for the Santan and Sumerenkuru traders.
7) The prosperity of the Santan trade from the end of 18th century to the middle of the 19th century was held by the political and economic balance between China and Japan on Sakhalin, and the profits of the Santan and Sumerenkuru traders were much dependent on the difference in demand and prices between China and Japan. For example, there was a great demand for sable fur in China, and the Chinese and Manchu people paid much for it, while the Japanese were not interested in it at all and sold it to the Santan and Sumerenkuru traders much cheaper than in China. Therefore, their trade activity was fatally damaged by the destruction of this balance by the third power, imperial Russia.
Though I could not completely carry out the second purpose of this paper, Le. a reexamination of the ethnographic discourse of the society and culture of the people of the Lower Amur basin, I could make a first step in accomplishing it by clarifying the characteristics of their trade activity. I would like to make further steps in other papers, in which I will examine such problems as the political background of the Santan trade, the quality and quantity of the profit of the Santan and Sumerenkuru traders, methodological problems of historical studies of the indigenous people of this region, and so on.

* 国立民族学博物館第４研究部

Key Words：Santan Trade, Lower Amur, Sakhalin, sable fur, Ul'chi, Nivkhi
キーワード：サンタン交易，アムール川下流域，樺太，クロテン，ウリチ，ニヴフ

The recent dissolution of the Soviet Union has had manifold effects on the reorganization of nations and small ethnic groups, especially in border areas. In this article I examine problems that confront the Setos, a small Estonian subgroup in the southeastern border area of Estonia. After briefly reviewing the birth of the Estonian nation, I will describe the historical background of Petseri question, one of the Russo-Estonian territorial disputes. I will then highlight practical problems and conflicts that have arisen from the dispersion of the Seto community, following recent demarcation of the border.
Disintegration of the Soviet Union was definitely put into full swing by the successful departure of the three Baltic republics. Estonia, according to its present formal stand, should recover the whole territory as of 1940, when it was annexed to the Soviet Union by military force threat. In fact, most part of Estonia's former Petseri region (Pechora in Russian) , in the Southeast, has remained under de facto Russian control. Until 1920, the Petseri region was part of the Russian Pskov Province (guberniya), but it was ceded with its inhabitants to the newly born Estonian Republic by the Tartu Peace treaty, which recognized for the first time the independency of Estonia with clear borders. Almost two thirds of the approximately sixty thousand inhabitants of Petseri were, however, ethnic Russians, whereas three fourths of the remaining twenty thousand Estonians were orthodox Setos. Estonia, during its short history of independence, tried to integrate and 'civilise' the Setos, who had been denigrated for example for their distinct dialect and conservative living traditions. Later in 1945, after reintroduction of the Soviet regime, three quaters of Petseri were again restored to Russia's Pskov Province (now termed oblast), thus dividing the Setos into two administratively different areas.
Due to the very limited sovereign controle of borders between former Soviet republics, local residents could freely cross borders for daily needs in many areas. Setos on both sides were therefore able to keep close contacts with each other. For local communities, real problems have only emerged in the early 1990's with Estonia's splitting from the Soviet Union, and with its aspiration to recover the whole Petseri territory. Russia reacted to this in various ways, including unilateral demarcation of a border, that divides the Setos into two groups that are unable to maintain regular and daily contacts.
The Setos launched efforts to preserve and activate Seto cultural traditions in the late 1980s, and they see the present border issue as extremely threatening to both daily life and to their cohesion as an ethnic group. The present paper examines the growth and vacillation of Seto ethnic consciousness in the face of conflicts between Russia and Estonia.

* 国立民族学博物館第３研究部

Key Words：Estonia, Seto, border, subethnic group, ethnic consciousness
キーワード：エストニア，セトゥ人，国境，サブエスニック集団，民族意識

A concentrated deposit of carbonized cereal grains was excavated at Haimenkou site, Yunnan, in 1957. Based on its appearance the deposit was first reported as containing barnyard millet (Echinochloa sp.). Sasaki (first author) received a sample from Yunnan Museum for closer examination, using scanning electron microscopy. Matsutani identified the cereal as foxtail millet (Setaria italica), Here, Li discusses the significance of foxtail millet in Chinese archaeology. Sakamoto discusses the place of origin and possible dispersal routes of domesticated Setaria italica. Sasaki synthesizes these discussions and suggests the existence of a southern route among the many dispersal routes involved in the eastward movement of domesticated foxtail millet.

*　財団法人アイヌ文化復興・研究推進機構，国立民族学博物館名誉教授
**　東京大学，国立民族学博物館研究協力者
***　中国雲南省博物館
**** 龍谷大学，国立民族学博物館研究協力者

Key Words：foxtail millet, barnyard millet, Yunnan, Haimenkou Site
キーワード：アワ，ヒエ，雲南，海門口遺跡

Jomon clay figurines are well known to Japanese people as archaeological remains representing the Jomon culture of prehistoric Japan. The figurines have been highly valued by them as objects of primitive art since long ago. But the fact is that while typological and chronological study of the artefacts has been enthusiastically pursued, almost nothing has been made clear about their function. The archaeological study of Jomon figurines has a history of more than 100 years since the Meiji era; nevertheless, speaking of their functional qualities, no further conclusion has yet been reached than that they were objects related to religion or magic.
There have been some archaeologists who supposed that they might be images of the goddess of the Jomon people or magical objects, and many have even believed that they were orginally made to be ritually broken and sprinkled over the earth. However, no such conjectures hitherto published are well founded, being mere impressions or exercises of imagination.
Archaeologists aiming at a scientific approach to the ideological and social aspect of the Jomon culture, on the other hand, must make every effort to develop a scientific interpretation of the function of those figurines.
This study is a new attempt to understand the principles of figurinemaking from a morphological analysis of the figurines, and to interpret the functional meaning of the morphological principles by systematic application of ethnographic information about modern hunter-gatherers' anthropomorphic figurines. The present paper is Part 1.of an ethnoarchaeological study, consisting of the following two chapters.
Chapter 1 explains that anthropomorphic Jomon figurines were not dolls, toys or magical objects but images of nature spirits or deities as cult objects.
Chapter 2 is .devoted to showing that the Jomon figurines are not mere images of spirits or deities but images of their mother goddess as protector of their fertility or reproduction.

* 国立民族学博物館共同研究員

Key Words：Jomon clay figurines, goddess cult, ethnographical information, huntergatherers,　fertility goddess
キーワード：縄文土偶，女神信仰，民族誌的情報，狩猟採集民，産の女神

* Kobe City University of Foreign Studies
** This paper is a slightly modified version of the one presented to the 30th International Conferenceon Sino-Tibetan Languages and Linguistics held inBeijing on August 24-28, 1997.

11世紀後半に文字化されたビルマ語(ミャンマー語)の綴字法を歴史的に辿ると,古ビルマ語の時代から現在の標準的綴字法の成立に至るまでに,少なくとも三度の改変を経ていることが既に知られていた｡しかし,その改変が行われた社会的,歴史的な背景は不明であった｡本論文は,ビルマ(ミャンマー)の最古のパガン王朝からアヴァ王朝までの碑文に見られる綴字法の変遷,ビルマ最後の王朝であるのコウソバウソ王朝盛期のボードーパヤー王及び最後の王ティボー王の綴字に関する勅令と,ティボー王が勅令で標準的正書法の参考文献として言及している論著の幾つかを比較検討し,王朝時代の綴字法の標準化の性格と植民地時代以降の標準化の性格の違いを論じると共に,古ビルマ語時代の標準的綴字法を推定した｡更に,古ビルマ語時代の標準的綴字法が成立する以前の-碑文に認められる特異な綴字法から現代の標準ビルマ語の舒音節の三声調に対応するプロソディクな要素の対立が当時既に存在していたことが確認されることを明らかにし,その表記法等から標準化以前のビルマ語の声調が,ピッチの対立
ではなく,発声法（phonation types/modes: Clear(/Modal) voice vs. Breathy voice vs.Creaky voice)であった可能性を指摘した。

Key Words：Burmese, standardization, orthography, inscription, tone
キーワード：ビルマ語，標準化，綴字法，碑文，声調

* Tõhoku University, Faculty of Letters

Key Words：India, Sanskrit language, verb-forms, Indo-European, historical grammar
キーワード：インド，サンスクリット語，動詞活用，インド・ヨーロッパ語，歴史文法