Front and Back Covers,Volume 31, Number 3. June 2015

Front and back cover caption, volume 31 issue 3 Front cover AFRICAN ART This slightly larger than life‐size terracotta head (height 35 cm.) was found face down below some 4 metres of deposit in a tributary of the Nok valley, Rafin Dinya, in Kaduna State, Nigeria. Estimated age is mid first millennium BC. This image was published by Bernard Fagg, archaeologist and museum curator, in Man (old series) vol. 56, July 1956, p.89. Bernard Fagg (1915–1987), William's younger brother, was the first to identify the Nok culture in 1943. He established the Jos Museum in 1952 in Jos, Nigeria. (Collection: National Museum, Lagos, Nigeria). In this issue, Jonathan Benthall assesses Bill Fagg's legacy in the African art scene. Back cover SAKHA CARTOON HEROES In the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), northeast Siberia, activists from the Sakha nationalist intelligentsia are making strenuous efforts to revive their peoples' epic tradition, the Olongkho. Olongkho recitals undergirded this indigenous Siberian community's position within a complex and shifting animist cosmos, incorporating ancestors, demons, area spirits and gods, until they petered out during the second half of the 20th century, under the influence of Soviet modernization. Bards would travel from homestead to homestead, drawing their audiences into improvised recitations that would continue through the night. Most Sakha people now are unable to understand the elaborate language these bards used. Teachers, politicians and academics are investing large amounts of time and money into a cultural form that brings little pleasure to its dutiful audiences. They are displaying much ingenuity in rendering the Olongkho palatable to young people, in particular – such as creating a cartoon version of a famous text. But why are they trying so hard? The answer lies in the reified notion of ethnicity that has become integrated into the reproduction of social differentiation through popular taste, throughout Russia. Specific understandings of ethnic identity and cultural production were promoted throughout the Soviet period, as part of the Soviet state's massive social engineering project. These notions recur in contemporary public spaces and performances: they are implicit in the statue pictured to the right of this text, which incorporates a Sakha epic hero into a monument to those killed in World War Two. They have borne fruit in a capacity to associate a particular moral stance and social standing with a taste for one's own ethnic cultural heritage. As analyzed by Eleanor Peers in this issue, it is this association that accords Putin's actions in the Crimea their power to legitimate and reinforce the current Russian state.