Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 43 (4) 2015

Annotation:  The Pleistocene Peopling of the North: Paleolithic Milestones and Thresholds Horizons In Northern Eu Transitional Middle to Upper Paleolithic Industries in the Rubas Valley, Coastal Dagestan Truncated-Faceted Pieces in the Paleolithic of Northern Asia Archaeological Sites on the Angara Bank from the Chadobets River to Boguchany: Findings of a Survey A Rare Bronze Sword from Lake Baikal Shore A Stone Abrasive Tile from Cheremkhova, Western Amur Region A Ceremonial Saddle from Altynkazgan, Mangyshlak Peninsula, Kazakhstan First Steps Towards a National Geographic Information System, “Archaeological Sites of Russia” Petroglyphs of Khabarovsk Territory: The Impact of the 2013 Amur and Ussuri Flooding Shakan: Kazakh 18th–19th Century Narrow-Bladed Battle Axes Mapping the Traditional Dress Types of Southwestern Siberian Old Believers (late 1800s–early 1900s) The Impact of Urbanization on the Transmission of Culture and Language of the Sakha People: A Sociol The Morphology of Human Teeth from Afontova Gora II, Southern Siberia, and Their Status Relative to A Paleogenetic Study of Pazyryk People Buried at Ak-Alakha-1, the Altai Mountains   

A Rare Bronze Sword from Lake Baikal Shore

V.I. Molodin and G.I. Medvedev.

This article describes an unusual high-quality tripartite bronze sword found on the shore of Lake Baikal and apparently dating to the Scythian Age. Because the blade and the hilt are nonfunctional, the sword was not used as an actual weapon. The guard is peculiarly shaped, and decorated with stylized faces. While no exact parallels are known to us, certain features link the specimen to Scythian counterparts, and to a sword from Khotu-Talaakh, Yakutia. Special attention is paid to the semantics of the fi nd, which possibly evidence contact with the ritual practices of the Scytho-Siberian world and those of the Siberian taiga.

Keywords: Sword, Siberia, Lake Baikal, taiga zone, Scythian Age, ritual.