Paper long abstract:

The archeology of Kazakhstan is the most visible publicly and dynamic anthropological sub-discipline in this post-Soviet Central Asian country. Kazakhstani state and elite pay close attention to archeology through different programs and grants. I argue that after becoming independent more than thirty years ago, Kazakhstani archeology still demonstrates a strong attachment to Russian archeology as with the former academic metropole, and in some sense still operates in many ways in the shadows of the Soviet legacy. In Kazakhstan, archeology is still heavily dependent on state ideology or used by it as a nation-building tool.