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 Ceremonial Saddle from Altynkazgan, Mangyshlak Peninsula, Kazakhstan

A.E. Astafyev and E.S. Bogdanov.

An unusual saddle found in a stone enclosure at Altynkazgan on the Mangyshlak Peninsula, Kazakhstan, is described. Its parts include silver plaques with fi gures of animals and birds, and small details of garniture. The fi gures were punched from the inside, apparently on a template made from wooden planks, and their details were modeled with a special tool. On the basis of parallels from the Volga region, Transurals, and Northern Caucasus, a Xiongnu-type saddle manufactured in the 5th century AD is reconstructed. A semantic and cultural interpretation of zoomorphic images is suggested. Though they have no exact parallels, their style is typical of golden ornaments of the Xiongnu Age. TheAltynkazgan fi nd demonstrates that high-quality saddles were already manufactured during the Xiongnu epoch, being prototypical of those made by Old Turks.

Keywords: Kazakhstan, Mangyshlak, Xiongnu, Late Sarmatians, saddles.