Pranė Dundulienė - etninės kultūros vertybių rinkėja, tautos istorijos ir kultūros tyrinėtoja

LTStraipsnyje daugiausia dėmesio skiriama Pranės Dundulienės vadovautoms etnografinėms ekspedicijoms, kurios buvo gera mokykla, kaip reikia dirbti savo krašto kultūrai. Savo pavyzdžiu ji ugdė atsakomybės jausmą už savo darbą, mokė moksliniam darbui reikalingos metodikos, formavo pirmuosius mokslinio ir muziejinio darbo įgūdžius. Kad darbas vyktų sklandžiai ir sistemiškai, pati sudarė anketas rinkti medžiagai apie sovietmečio kaimą, materialinės ir dvasinės kultūros keitimąsi, naujas šeimos ir darbo tradicijas, ji mokė užrašinėti pasakojimus apie gyvenimą, rinkti ir tiksliai aprašinėti daiktus, fotografuoti sparčiai nykstančius senojo kaimo paminklus ir naujas gyvenvietes ir tinkamai sutvarkyti surinktą medžiagą, kad ji taptų etnografiniu šaltiniu. [Iš leidinio]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Artefaktai; Ekspedicijos; Etnografinė medžiaga; Lauko tyrimai; Lietuvos etnologija; Pranė Dundulienė; Vilniaus universitetas (VU; Vilnius University); Artifacts; Ethnographic material; Ethnology of Lithuania; Expeditions; Fieldwork; Pranė Dundulienė.

ENThe history of ethnography in the Soviet period cannot be imagined without the works of Pranė Dundulienė. She studied at the Department of Ethnology of Stephen Bdthory University under Kazimierz Moszyński, a representative of the evolutionary cultural- historical school. Upon graduation she already had enough knowledge and experience to assess the cultural phenomena in the context of cultural history by emphasising their most archaic features and the stages of their evolutionary development. She considered mythical folklore, works of folk art, customs and rites as ethnographic data as well. From 1944 Dundulienė worked at Vilnius University, where she built a methodological basis of ethnography by lecturing on the theory, introducing the ethnographic collections accumulated in museums and holding sessions of fieldwork according to her own programme. In agreement with the requirements of the period, field workers collected material about the building of collective farms and state farms, the economic and cultural achievements of the countryside, the changes of material and spiritual culture, and the new family and work traditions. They wrote down stories of older people about life in the past, supplemented by small-form folklore, which is an important source of learning about the lifestyle and customs and can reflect certain phenomena of ethnic culture, which are no longer found in the material heritage.One of the tasks of ethnographic fieldwork was to collect material objects. The aim was to analyse and meticulously describe the obtained objects, as an object without a detailed description loses much of its value. What could not be taken to a museum was photographed: rapidly decaying wooden monuments, old houses, wooden, clay and iron artefacts, knitted and crocheted artefacts, textiles and new settlements. The material collected during each session of fieldwork was significantly supplemented by drawings and drafts. One of the rules of work was to establish and maintain contacts with local inhabitants, to arouse their interest and invite them to collaborate, and to involve teachers. A composite part of fieldwork was an exhibition of the collected ethnographic objects and a lecture on ethnography and the work of collecting, research and fostering of folk art. So that the collected material would become an ethnographic source for scholarly research, each description went through the stages of editing, specification and rewriting. Properly processed fieldwork material would be handed to several institutions to make it available for a wider circle of researchers.The extensive valuable material from various fields of folk culture and domestic life collected during fieldwork is important only for the fact that it is often unrepeatable, as many described villages are no longer in existence. The professor knew that it was not until a dozen or|several dozen years later that the value of this material would be revealed, when village life and folklore would be considerably changed and become priceless to researchers of the history of Lithuanian culture, linguists, writers, historians and those interested in the past of the Lithuanian nation. Fieldwork was an excellent training for working for the culture of one’s homeland. By her own example Dundulienė fostered the sense of responsibility for one’s work, taught the methods of scholarly work and the basic skills of scholarly and museum work. [From the publication]