Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 36 (4) 2008

Annotation:  Environmental Changes in the Mongolian Altai during the Holocene New Data on Radiocarbon Chronology of Neolithic Ceramics from the Volga-Kama Region 1929 Year Tree-Ring Chronology for the Altai-Sayan Region (Western Tuva) Early Urilsky Culture Assemblage from Bukinsky Kluch, Bureya River Representations of Warriors on Early Medieval Turkic Bronze Plaques from Eastern Central Asia New Categories of Wooden Artifacts of the Mid 1st Millennium AD from the site of Vis II (Vychegda Ba The Han Chariot from Noin Ula Mound 20 (Mongolia) Defense Constructions of Fort Umrevinsky (Based on 2002–2004 Archaeological Excavations) Petroglyph Sites of Kazakhstan and Western Central Asia as Part of the Archaeological Landscape: Ne Zoomorphic Images in Eastern Slavic Embroidery of Southwestern Siberia New Ethnic Holidays in the Sayan-Altai The Origin of the Early Nomadic Populations of Tuva: Craniometrical Evidence The “Mediterraneans” of Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan, Indo-European Migrations, and the Origin of Human Humerus from Khoroshevsky Island: History and Context   

Zoomorphic Images in Eastern Slavic Embroidery of Southwestern Siberia

E.F. Fursova.

The article presents the results of the fi rst study of iconographic, compositional, and stylistic features of zoomorphic images in embroideries made in the 19th and the early 20th cent. by Russian women – members of the old residents’ community of Western Siberia. The analysis reveals several types of decorative compositions. Hypotheses concerning the origins and functions of the embroideries in Siberian Russian folk culture are proposed. The specimens, collected during fi eld studies in the 1980s and 1990s, were preserved either by old women who had made them in their youth or by relatively young women as a memory of their grandmothers, mothers, and mothers-in-law. Certain towels were memorial, i.e. they were received after the death of a woman who had made them. Ethnographic data indicate that animal images such as horses, lions, dogs, hares, elephants, etc., differ in origin. To understand their function and meaning, both their prototypes and their late transformations must be considered along with intercultural contacts and the impact of urban culture.