Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 46 (3) 2018   DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2018.46.3.083-091

Annotation:  The Discovery of a Bifacial Industry in Vietnam Technological Development of the Neolithic Pottery at Göytepe (West Azerbaijan) Reconstruction of Extreme Paleoclimatic Events in Northwestern Siberia Using Ancient Wood from Fort On the Construction Features of Wheeled Vehicles in Iran and Mesopotamia (Third to First Millennia B The Adaptation of the Seima-Turbino Tradition to the Bronze Age Cultures in the South of the West Si A Half of a Metal Bipartite Mold of the Seima-Turbino Period from the Upper Irtysh Region Zotino III: An Early Iron Age Metallurgical Center in the Trans-Urals Middle and Late Bronze Age House-Building in the Steppe and Forest-Steppe Altai Artistic Metalwork Found Near the Tomskaya Pisanitsa Cultural Ties Across Taiga and Steppe: Material Culture from the Medieval Lower Angara River and Pro Bronze Plaques from Northern Kyrgyzstan with Representations of Horsemen Kimak and Chu-mu-kun 處木昆: Notes on an Identification Traditional Buryat Burials: Changes and Stereotypes Substitute Offering: An Ob Ugrian Ritual Tradition Surviving in the 20th and Early 21st Century Seventeenth Century Siberia as a Land of Opportunity: Social Mobility Among the Russian Pioneers Deciduous Human Teeth from the Upper Paleolithic Site of Yudinovo, Western Russia Realism of Face Depiction in Portraiture   

Artistic Metalwork Found Near the Tomskaya Pisanitsa

K.V. Kononchuk¹ and A.G. Marochkin^{2, 3}

¹Instit ute for the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences, Dvortsovaya nab. 18, St. Petersburg, 191186, Russia

²Institute of Human Ecology, Federal Research Center of Coal and Coal Chemistry, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Sovetsky pr. 18, Kemerovo, 650000, Russia

³Kemerovo State University, Krasnaya 6, Kemerovo, 650000, Russia

This article describes rare metalwork items found in the 1970s, 1990s, and 2010s near the Tomskaya Pisanitsa rock art site—a zoomorphic figurine, two anthropomorphic masks, and an ornithomorphic pendant. Parallels among the ritual and funerary artifacts from southern and Western Siberia are discussed. The figurine, representing a horse or an onager resembles certain examples of ritual artistic metalwork of the Tagar and Kizhirovo cultures (500–300 BC). Anthropomorphic masks represent the Tomsk-Narym variant of late Kulaika metalwork (100 BC to 500 AD) but may be as late as the sixth century, being associated with the post-Kulaika early medieval tradition. The ornithomorphic figurine, dating to 500–700 AD, belongs to the early medieval trans-cultural tradition that originated from late Kulaika art. The Tomskaya Pisanitsa site resembles the Early Iron Age and early medieval sanctuaries of Western and southern Siberia, with votive hoards of artifacts, including artistic metalwork. Such sites are part of the Northern Asian tradition of offerings made near rock art galleries. Hypotheses are brought forward concerning the attitudes of the late Kulaika people to rock art sites in the first half of the first millennium AD.

Keywords: Artistic metalwork, Early Iron Age, Early Middle Ages, sanctuaries, rock art, Tomskaya Pisanitsa.