We met today with Rima Yerkinova, the director of the Altai Museum, and interviewed her (for four hours!) about the 1993 unearthing of a 2,500 year-old burial on the Ukok Plateau by Russian archaeologists. A young woman’s body, frozen in permafrost, was removed from an elaborate grave and some Altaian people still feel that the disturbance can only be healed by the return of the so-called “Ice Princess,” which the museum director prefers to call “the Ukok Princess.”

Yerkinova showed us four paintings by different Altaian artists, which she said were depictions of the so-called princess. The emotion triggered by the episode has yielded an outpouring of creative energy while illustrating controversies all over the world involving scientific research and human remains. What are the ethics guiding archaeologists as they dig down into the earth to discover lost truths about human cultures and migrations?

Yerkinova is a passionate advocate of leaving human remains undisturbed. Meanwhile, she says, the collective unconscious of the Altai people has been stimulated by the woman’s spirit. As documented by the 1997 NOVA/BBC documentary Siberian Ice Maiden, a team of Russian archaeologists led by Natalia Polosmak discovered the body, carefully coaxed it out of the ice with warm water, treated it with chemicals to preserve it, and then displayed their remarkable find in a museum display case. Yerkinova told us that the incident has had an unexpected impact by inspiring the Altaian people to express their feelings and their vision of who they are in art. Clearly, as these four paintings illustrate, the identity and the soul of the Altaian people are profoundly linked to land and history.

We plan to return to Russia in the future to interview archaeologist Natalia Polosmak about the Ice Maiden story.