Светлана Жарникова – Indo-Europeans cultural traditions (страница 3)

Hence, we may once again state-a point that must be specially noted-that the carpel-design decor on Andronovo pottery was most likely a totem, a symbol of clan and ethnic affiliation for the person whose possessions were thus decorated.

This evidently continues throughout the Karasuk period between the 17th and 12th centuries B.C., when the Scyth-Siberian Animal Style developed and during the Tagar period between the 7th and 1st centuries B.C. when often encountered on the celebrated open-worked Minusinsk belt plaques, in addition to representations of animals, is an orgamental design characteristic of Andronovo pottery decor, more specifically a lattice of 5-symbols (Fig. 11). These clasps or buckles, common throughout the middle reaches of the Yenisei River during the 3rd-1st centuries B.C. are to be met with the Ordos and Inner Mongolia-apparently due to the migrations starting at the turn of the Bronze and the beginning of the Iron Age of the tribes populating the southern fringe of the West Siberian taiga to the more southern regions. Responsible was apparently the wetter climate witch drastically expanded swamps and caused the taiga to encroach upon forest-steppes and steppe-lands territories. Nonetheless, yet in the Tashtyk period, extending from the 1st century B.C. to the 5th century A.D., the tribes populating the Minusinsk depression were distinctly Europoid, which is borne out by the terra-cotta portrait mask recovered from some family burial vaults. Kiselev quotes a Chinese chronicler who noted that the "Kyrgiz", who inhabited what is today Khakassia, had "red hair, rosy cheeks and blue eyes". He adds that the 8th-century scribe Ibn

Mukaffa had written of the Kyrgiz that they had "red hair and white skins". The

same is reported by a Tibetan source noting that the K'inc'a (the Kyrgiz) had blue

eyes, red hair and "a disgusting, i.e., unlike the Tibetan, Mongoloid) appearance.37

Further, among the items Kiselev recovered from the ruins of an edifice near

Abakan are some fascinating bronze door handles of local workmanship, that

represent the fantastic countenances of horned genii which "forcefully emphasize

the non-Chinese features. At any rate they are even more Europoid than the most

Europoid of contemporary Tashtyk funerary masks."38 He adds: "The mask

handles convey distinctly Europoid features particularly emphasized by the

highbridged nose. We see a Europoid's large features, of the type prevalent in

Southern Siberia from oldest antiquity and virtually up to the start of the Christian

era."39

We may thus state that the traditional ornamental pattern of meander,

swastikas, and 5-symbols characteristic of Andronovo pottery decor continued to

persist throughout Western Siberia and more specifically the Minusinsk

depression up to the start of the first millennium A.D., with some motives

reaching Ordos and Inner Mongolia.

It should be further noted that time wise the closest affinities with

Andronovo decor are to be found in North Caucasian sites of the turn of the

second and first millennia B.C., which period almost dovetails with that of the

colonization by Andronovo tribes in the 13th century B.C. of Southern Siberia's

steppes and forest-steppes. Apposite instances are afforded by the artefacts that

V.Markovin recovered from a burial vault by the village of Enghikal in

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Ingushetia that date back to the middle of the second millennium B.C. They

include plaques and fibulae with disk-shaped finials, embellished with die-

stamped swastikas and meanders (Fig, 57).40 He adds that "regrettably North

Caucasian Bronze Age pottery has been but little studied and hardly any

comparisons have been drawn between it and the pottery of the steppe cultures";41

yet, "... there is no doubt that precisely the steppe tribes from the lower Don area

infiltrated the Kuban basin".42

Among the artefacts R. Munchayev recovered from the Lugovoi cemetery in

the Assinsk gorge in Checheno-Ingushetia, there is a high proportion of bronze

plaques in the form of a double oval with die-stamped swastikas in the middle of

each (Fig. 40). He adds that "... these items were always found near the skull or

chest which allows to regard them as temple or pectoral plaques,"43 in other words,

as protective totems. Note that both in the Nesterovo and Lugovoi cemeteries in

the Assinsk gorge, mounds were now and again raised over burials. Munchayev

believes that there were cases when the ancient tribes here also erected barrows.

All this is most reminiscent of Andronovo tradition-also indicated by the

obligatory presence in burials of vessels and adornments, embellished with

ornamental motives that are more than traditional of Andronovo artifacts.

In all likelihood analogous functions were discharged by the sheet bronze

diadems embellished with an ornamental pattern identical with the decor of the

double oval Lugovoi plaques, which B. Tekhov recovered from the TH graves in

Northern Ossctia (Figs. 38 and 39). These diadems are decorated with circle»,

triangles and lo/rn^es ;m«l also an a rule with meander and swastika typo motives.

'I'ekhov says that similar diadems were recovered from a Styrfaz chamber-tomb in

the Northern Caucasus, from the Armenian village of Geharot and from sites in

Azerbaijan and Iran.44

He has also indicated the characteristic meander and swastika motives on the

Koban-type axes recovered from the same Tliburials.

Swastika-type motives complicated by many protruding lines are also to be

observed in the decor of finds unearthed in a number of places in Azerbaijan as for

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instance, on a clay die and also on the walls of a temple and in the plaster work of

an earth dwelling from the ancient village of Sary-Tepe, on the wall by a hearth

(Fig. 29) and the pintaderas (Figs. 54-56) of the village of Babadervish, which date

back to the 12th-8th centuries B.C.45

Consequently, the archaeological finds made in the Northern Caucasus and

partly in the Trans-Caucasus, in Armenia and Azerbaijan, provide us with

specimens of the use of ancient sacred ornamental motives that are characteristic

of Mezin site artefacts decor and of Tripolye-Cucuteni, Timber-Frame and,