On archaeological definition of ethnic group: continued

The author aimed to examine the core matter of the discussion, which has been going for a while in academic publications and numerous conferences in the Volga-Ural region. This discussion concerns the Ugrian presence in the Kama and Cis-Ural region in early Middle Ages. Particularly, its participants questioned the correctness of statistical analysis of archaeological materials conducted by V.A. Ivanov. In view of the criticisms and using corrected data of statistical analysis of the funerary rite practiced by the Kama and Cis-Ural archaeological cultures in the second half of I Millennium AD and their synchronous cultures in the forest zones of Trans-Ural and Western Siberia and Hungarian burial grounds of the Arpad period in the Danube area, V.A. Ivanov conducted a new analysis but arrived at the same conclusion, i.e. that all of these cultures are the same ethnic-cultural area, typologically connected with the archaeological culture of the ancient Hungarians. Further, V.A. Ivanov propose to abandon ethnic reconstruction, for a while, and to explain this phenomenon. It appears that in this case we face much more important and principal issues: methodology of ethnic definitions based on archaeological data, correlation of archaeology and its specific methods with methods of other branches, as well as jurisdiction of archaeology. In this regard, it is noted that none statistical methods are able to elevate archaeological data to ethnic-linguistic reconstructions. It is necessary to distinguish two separate problems here: the statistical similarity between signs of archaeological cultures and their linguistic characteristics. It is methodologically incorrect to mix these two different approaches.