Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 53 (2) 2025   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2025.53.2.045-053

Annotation:  The Peopling of Mongolia by Homo sapiens denisovan The Earliest Snake Images in the Middle Irtysh Region The Ukok Plateau, an Archaeological Gem of the Altai: 35 Years Later An Unusual Bronze Figurine from the Samartai Museum, Yakutia: The “Thingin-Itself” and Semantic Cont Raman Spectroscopy Analysis of Pigments from the Boyary I Rock Art Site, Khakassia On the Identifi cation of Anonymous Artists in Rock Art Cremation Burials at Ust-Zelinda-2, the Northern Angara Region: Typology and Chronology of Artifacts Early Iron Age Ceramics from the Ust-Polui Ritual and Production Center: Aspects of Technology On Dating Archaeological Sites Evidencing Ferrous Metallurgy in the Southeastern Altai, based on Rad The Relationship Between Archaic Construction Methods in Pottery and Architecture in Central Asia The Siungkap-Ungkapon Ritual in the Batak Toba Community: Archaeological and Agricultural Aspects The Northwest Coast of North America as the Main Route from Beringia to the New World: The Evidence Ethno-Cultural Aspects of Siberian Regional Identity (Late 20th to the First Decades of the 21st Cen An Upper Second Molar from Akhshtyrskaya Cave and Population Affi nities of the Middle Paleolithic H Genetic Portraits of the Yakut Regional Populations (Based on Y-Chromosome Polymorphism Data)   

An Unusual Bronze Figurine from the Samartai Museum, Yakutia: The “Thing-in-Itself” and Semantic Content

R.I. Bravina¹ and V.M. Dyakonov^{1, 2}

¹Institute for Humanities Research and Indigenous Studies of the North, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Petrovskogo 1, Yakutsk, 677027, Russia

²Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pr. Akademika Lavrentieva 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia

This article presents a rare bronze idol—a winged bear with an anthropomorphic mask and a bear head on the chest. The artifact was found in the Khangalas Ulus (district) of Yakutia and is kept in the Samartai Museum in the village of Kerdem. The search for parallels led to a wide range of Early Iron Age and medieval cultures of the Western Urals and Western Siberia. Similar composite images are common among cast ritual items relating to the Pechora, Perm, and Western Siberian animal styles. Chemical analysis showed that the sculpture was made of tin bronze with the addition of iron. This bronze idol could have been brought to Yakutia by tradesmen or Cossacks. While being quite unusual for Yakutia, it could have been used to represent a patron spirit or aid in shamanic or domestic rituals, being consonant with Yakut religious, specifically totemic beliefs, as evidenced by numerous ethnographic sources.

Keywords: Samartai Museum, cast ritual items, winged bear, bird with mask on the chest, Western Siberian animal style, shamans