Tahtakuşlar Köyünde Şamanizm’in İzleri

Feride Kızıldağ’s study, Traces of Shamanism in Tahtakuşlar Village, is a comprehensive ethnographic research examining the cultural structure of Tahtakuşlar Village, located on the southern foothills of the Kaz Mountains, particularly the ancient shamanistic elements that persist within Alevi-Bektashi belief practices. The work aims to reveal the transformation of the Central Asian Turkic belief system in Anatolia by analyzing the historical identity, oral culture, rituals, and daily life practices of Tahtakuşlar, known as an Oğuz-Turkmen settlement. Kızıldağ emphasizes that shamanism cannot be treated merely as a magical or non-religious practice; rather, it is an element of cultural memory that lives on in the society’s cosmological conception, nature-cult relationships, and ritual behavior patterns. In this context, the work discusses in detail how shamanistic remnants persist in areas such as the hearth cult, ancestor spirits, mountain and sacred tree beliefs, the evil eye, protection rituals, and sacrificial practices. Qualitative methods such as participant observation, semi-structured interviews, oral history recordings, and ritual analyses were used in the research. Thanks to these methods, the village tradition of the dede, the structures of the cem, sacred places, symbols in ceremonies, and healing/curing practices were examined within their historical contexts. Kızıldağ notes that ritual specialists in Tahtakuşlar—figures such as the dede, the ocak sahibi, and the “wise woman”—assume roles as intermediaries, protectors, and guides, similar to the social function of the shaman, even if they do not fully fulfill it. The work reveals the layered structure of Anatolia’s local belief system, showing that pre-Islamic elements in Turkish folk beliefs are not merely “remnants” but are sometimes actively practiced as cultural practices. In this respect, the study constitutes an important field research in the fields of folklore, anthropology, and history of religions.