Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia 53 (2) 2025   doi:10.17746/1563-0110.2025.53.2.063-069

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)   

On the Identification of Anonymous Artists in Rock Art

D.A. Sevostyanov¹ and A.I. Pankina²

¹Novosibirsk State Medical University, Krasny pr. 52, Novosibirsk, 630091, Russia

²Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the Peoples of the Far East, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pushkinskaya 89, Vladivostok, 690001, Russia

This article addresses the assessment of anonymous artistry in rock art—something basically different from the attribution of later paintings, where extra-artistic information may help to attribute the work to a specific artist. No such information is normally available in the case of rock art. The most one can expect in that case is to reveal pictures by one and the same creator, or by his imitators. In this study, we used the method of Giovanni Morelli, who proposed to assess artistry on the basis of secondary details reproduced unconsciously. Two examples of such details are discussed in detail. One concerns structural elements such as fossa, fossula, foveola, insecta, and fissura, detected by traceological analysis of petroglyphs associated with the Tagar culture of Khakassia. Their occurrence and orientation provide clues as to individual motility and thereby to their creators, albeit anonymous. The second example concerns diagnostic features of the large marine mammals depicted in the petroglyphs of the Ulsan group, South Korea (Bangudae and Cheonjeon-ri). Animals represented in those petroglyphs can be diagnosed at the species level, and the way they are represented enables us to decide whether the artist himself observed them or whether he merely imitated someone else's mannerisms.

Keywords: Petroglyphs, anonymous attribution, traceological method, structural elements of rock art, Tagar culture, Bangudae rock art