Artistic Metalwork Found Near the Tomskaya Pisanitsa

Artistic Metalwork Found Near the Tomskaya Pisanitsa

DOI: 10.17746/1563-0110.2018.46.3.083-091

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