CZAPLICKA, MARIA ANTONINA

(1886–1921)

   Polish-born cultural anthropologist best known for her fieldwork among indigenous Siberian communities, published as Aboriginal Siberia (1914). Czaplicka documents Siberian shamanism as a form of “Arctic hysteria”: “To be called a shaman is generally equivalent to being afflicted with hysteria.” The work is important for being one of the few original ethnographies of Siberian shamanism in English and for examining the discourse on shamanism as a form of psychosis.

   See also Mental Health.