Summary
L.S.Klein (Saint-Petersburg, Russia)
CONCEPTS OF TIME AND ARCHAEOLOGY. STRUCTURAL AND SEMIOTIC INVESTIGATION
There is no time in archaeological material. It is given to us in space but regardless of time. Time is present in archaeological material indirectly, as an arrangement of traces; it is apparently coded in the material. Establishing a connection between the archaeological material and history or prehistory, we introduce time into the material proceeding from its structures in the material and the sequence of the archaeological traces. So the philosophical concepts of time inevitably have an impact upon archaeological research. Obscure points (e.g. concerning the absolute and relative dating etc.) require looking into philosophical concepts.
Usually such analyses are dominated by bipolarity, but the oppositions differ from author to author. In the present work, twelve concepts of time are picked out and characterized; they are distributed by the periods they suit most. These are the primordial presentism, the cyclic notion of time, the genealogical, labeled perception of time (marked time), the linear concept (measured time), the dynamic time (the notion of the flow of time), the concept of general time, the vector time, the time acceleration, the relativist concept, the static time, and the annihilation of time. It is traced how they manifest themselves in subsequent epochs and how they are displayed in archaeology. On this basis, the problem of archaeological time is considered as well as its relationship with historical time, i.e. how the moment and the continuity are interrelated in them, how the past is realized in the present, and how this bears upon archaeological research.
Ye.V.Antonova (Moscow, Russia)
BURIALS AS SOURCE OF RECONSTRUCTION OF RITUAL AND MYTHOLOGICAL COMPLEXES OF PRELITERATE SO CIETIES
The paper presents the reconstruction of the rites and the associated mythological conceptions based on interpretation of burial features and the funeral stock of a preliterate early agricultural culture, i.e. the Samarra Culture (Mesopotamia, the VIth - the first half of the Vth mill. BC). The author proceeds from the assumption that a funeral rite is one of the "transitive" ceremonies, which also include the seasonal ones. Burial places located within dwelling areas, the graphic signs contained in the burial stock such as figured vessels and vessels with images of animals, plants, insects whose nature indicates that they are displayed at the moment of springtime blossoming, and anthropomorphic figurines permit to reveal, according to the author, some essential elements of rites and conceptions. In early agricultural societies, the images of dead played a tremendous role symbolizing the unity of family-generic collectives and providing the relation to the World of Nature. Alongside with other mythological personages, they were participants of rituals including the seasonal ones. Intrinsic similarity between "transitive" funeral ceremonies and seasonal rituals led to using the same signs in both. The above permits to consider the funeral stock (given that it is sufficiently informative) as a source of reconstruction of some important constituents of ritual and mythological complexes in preliterate culture carriers.
Yu.B.Serikov (Nizhniy Tagil, Russia)
ON SEMANTICS OF SOME ATTRIBUTES OF SHAMANS OF STONE AGE
The method of mythological interpretation of grave goods in burials of shamans is used to find out the semantic load of attributes of the Stone Age shamans. Application of this method allows us to consider these attributes as signs of a semiotic system, as elements of a particular language of antiquity. It expands the boundaries of understanding and permits reconstruction of their functional and sacral purpose. Using extensive archeological and ethnographical material the present paper analyzes the symbolical purpose of shamanic staffs, belts and head and breast ornaments of the costume. A special attention is given to the semantics of anthropomorphous and zoomorphous images, as well as symbolical signs which made part of the ornaments of the shaman costume. Elucidation of the symbolism of the unusual finds and their unusual position allows us to specify the particularities of the buried shaman's social status. These finds show that besides the characteristic features, the semantics of shamanic attributes also involved solely individual symbolism of the shamanic cult which sometimes seems obscure to us. Such individual features are traced practically among all the attributes of the Stone Age shamans.
Revealing the semantics of shamanic attributes allows us to understand the structure and topography of shaman burials. Contact with other worlds was established by dint of shamans when they were alive. Shamans were buried on symbolical borders of the worlds for them to continue service to their kin and prevent alien forces from penetration into the world of people.
T.M.Tkachuk (Ivano-Frankovsk, Ukraine)
SIGN SYSTEM OF BYLCHE ZOLOTOYE OF VERTEBA I: EXPERIENCE OF PRACTICAL SEMIOTICS
The study of Verteba I sign system involves three levels of semiotic analysis. Formal relations between the signs are shown on the syntactic level. The relations between the signs and the objects they designate are observed on the semantic level. The relations between the signs and people who use them are shown on the pragmatic one.
The statistico-positional analysis of the sign system of Bylche Zolotoye of Verteba I has shown that there are 227 different signs on the vessels of that memorial with their total number being 1139 (Tables 13-16). The ratio between the total number of the signs and the dinner ware analyzed (758 pieces) is 1.5.
A diachronic comparison of the signs ratio to the dinner ware (for the Shypinets group) indicates that at the first, formative and most expansive stage of its development the number of signs on the vessels is rather scarce (0.2 in Nezvisko III). At the second, stable period the number of signs on the dinner ware increases slightly (1 in Shypintsy A). At the third stage, that of destabilization, when the territory of the group reduced significantly and Verteba I was inhabited for the first time apparently, being used as a shelter the number of signs is the largest (1.5 in Verteba I).
It is not inconceivable that the destabilization period of the group caused intensive magic acts with the help of which Tripoli population of Shypinets settlements tried to return the former stability.
Tamila M.Potyomkina (Moscow, Russia)
SYSTEM OF SACRAL SPACE ORGANIZATION OF STEPPE BRONZE BURIAL GROUNDS (ON MATERIALS OF EXCAVATIONS OF DASHTI-KOZY IN CENTRAL ASIA)
The paper focuses on the materials of excavations of one of the southern most permanently dug out burial grounds of steppe cattlemen in the foothills of Pamir on the Zeravshan river. The time of the monument functioning is the XIV-XI cc. BC. The ethnic belonging of the population is defined as Indo-Iranian (Indo-Aryan).
The methods of research involve the data of archaeoastronomy, mythology, and paleoclimatology, which permits to characterize funeral rites in terms of such meaningful perspectives as structural, functional, and ideological.
The structure of sacral space of a burial ground combines two principles of spatial organization - the centric and the linear-centric ones. The burial ground center was a ritual collective grave with seven humans located on the western edge of the cemetery's central axial line oriented in the West - East direction. All the objects of the burial ground which were placed in a certain order to the east from a ritual grave were connected with it. Burials and sacrificial pits were concentrated in groups in which they were located in circle. In the center of a circle there were burials with the richest set of objects placed along the central axis and at the same time oriented with their heads to the center of the ritual grave, i.e. strict by westward in contrast to burials of ritual grave oriented to the east. The western orientation of the dead facing the north is characteristic of most burials in the burial ground accomplished according to the traditional ceremony (i.e. bent on the left side, hands before face, with grave goods). Orientation with heads to the east facing the south is peculiar of the deceased buried by the non-traditional ceremony (with traces of violent death and without grave goods).
Comparison of orientations of the deceased and the conditions of their burials to the most significant astronomical azimuths is indicative of the connection with the directions of the sunrise and the sunset in different seasons though with the appreciable prevalence of the equinox days. Simultaneously, orientation of the deceased taking into account head and face directions reflects projection of the sacral-positive top (the North) and the sacral-negative bottom (the South) of space vertical partitioning on the terrestrial plane with respect to the sides of the horizon. In this connection it can be assumed that sacrificial burials were linked with a solar deity and the general idea of the Universe, which coordinates with Indo-Iranian mythology.
Therefore, the lay-out and orientation of burial complexes automatically, as if it were, regulated the relations of the deceased inside a burial ground. Thus, the sacral space is not only outlined, but also differentiated with the determination of the semantics of its key parts where all the objects of a burial ground were comprehended within the framework of the World Model having a three-piece horizontal and vertical structure.
S.V.Ivanova (Odessa, Ukraine)
SIGN AND DENOTAT: SEMANTIC LOADING OF ORNAMENTAL PATTERNS IN YAMNAIA AND CATACOMB CULTURES (POSSIBLE VARIANT OF INTERPRETATION)
The meaning of objects of the primitive and traditional culture in general is made up of many constituents, and it is this peculiarity that allows us to approach the given object as a source of data of the most various character. An object within the archaeocultural context (and in a wider sense its reflection in archeological realia) comprises the information embedded in it both consciously and at the subconscious level. As an element of culture it includes not only rational elements which the authors of artefacts could transmit "overtly", but also the subconscious ones covert even from the carriers of this culture though making a powerful impact upon it. This subconscious constituent of the inner world of people of the entire culture is not obvious but leaves its trace on everything created by its carriers.
V.Kuzin-Losev (Donetsk, Ukraine )
AREA OF SENSES, SIGNS AND SYMBOLS OF CATACOMB CULTURAL-HISTORICAL COMMUNITY
The present work is devoted to the semiotic analysis of the culture of the Catacomb cultural-historical community which existed in the 2nd half of the III mill. BC in Eastern European steppes. The basic mythologemes of the culture, i.e. "textiles", "cloth", "cord", and "rope" are restored. Incomplete differentiation between the referent and the significant has led to a specific kind of text-formation in which language facts of the Catacomb culture could serve both as symbols and the meaningful side of a sign. On this basis the missed mythological texts are restored at the level of semantemes but not lexemes, as the verbal language of the Catacomb culture has not been preserved. In the work directly reconstructed are the plots about a person with animal features, hunting, meeting with a woman, marriage; about a hero's meeting with a woman and refusal of marriage which causes his death; about a hero's meeting with a man at hunting, the establishment of bonds of blood brotherhood, and a number of other plots.
Yu.B.Polidovich (Donetsk, Ukraine)
ON CERTAIN SEMIOTIC ASPECTS OF VESSEL FUNCTION IN FUNERAL CEREMONIES OF PRE-SCYTHIAN TIME
We have traced two models of using a vessel in a funeral ceremony in the Chernogorovskaja culture of the Pre-Scythian period in Northern Black Sea Littoral (the X - the 1st half of the VII century BC). They corresponded to two chronological and ceremonial groups of burials, i.e. the early group with skeletons crouched on one side and oriented to the east, and the late group with the skeletons straightened on their backs and oriented to the west.
During the Early Pre-Scythian time the vessel was placed in a burial usually "bound" to certain parts of a deceased's body, more often to its head. In a number of complexes the vessel was placed either opposite or behind the dead body, i.e. its position were juxtaposed. It is only in individual cases that the vessel position can be oriented to certain parts of a funeral construction or to the cardinal points. The basic function of the vessels, both ceramic and wooden was connected with the storage of the posthumous or sacrificial food placed in the burial, i.e. drinks, dairy products, cereal, and broth. Meat food which was not placed into the vessels could also be used for that purpose. At the same time, in early Pre-Scythian burials the remnants of meat food are found more often than the vessels. All this distinguishes the Early Pre-Scythian period from the Late Bronze epoch when vessels were used in burial much more often; besides, they fulfilled the space-modelling and social-rank-indication functions. Therefore, on the whole, the role of vessels in a funeral ceremony in the Early Pre-Scythian period is apparently less significant in comparison with the Late Bronze epoch.
The second model is typical of the Late Pre-Scythian period and corresponds with the appearance of a new funeral ceremony. The vessels were also specially oriented mostly to the parts of a buried body, the most significant among them being the head, but at the same time the positions of a vessel placement are actualized in another way: "to the left of the deceased" - "to the right of him". Generally, the role of a vessel and "food in a vessel" in the context of a funeral ceremony in the Late Pre-Scythian period became more important in comparison with the earlier time, whereas the role of meat food became rather insignificant.
A.S.Ostroverkhov (Ilyichevsk, Ukraine)
MONUMENTS OF ANIMAL STYLE FROM OLVIA AND NIKONII REGIONS (END OF VI - III CC BC)
The paper analyses a rather impressive collection of monuments of the animal style found at various times and under various circumstances in the Dnieper-Bug-Dniestr inter-estuary, i.e. on the territory of Olvinian chorae, Nikonii and its neighborhood, and also on the adjoining Scythian steppes. Some quite distinguished products can be seen among these articles.
According to their chronology, the articles fall into two groups: 1) the end of the VI - the second half of the IV centuries BC, 2) the end of the IV - the III centuries BC. The images with different quantitative variations embrace the following triad: predatory birds - ungulate animals - chtonic animals. Multifigure compositions with the images of fantastic animals and scenes of laceration appear in the Late Classic - the Early Hellenistic time.
The absolute majority of the monuments belongs to the Olvinian School of animal style pointed out above. The basic centers for the manufacture of such product were the cities of Olvia, Berezan, Nikonii and some peripheral settlements. In the IV-III centuries BC there was Kosharskoe settlement in the mouth of Tiligulskii estuary.
The art of animal style was brought to antique cities of Northern Pontus from Ionia. Ionians, in their turn, borrowed it from Forward Asia. The bestiary of real animals (a lion, feline and lupine predators, an elk, a deer, a wild boar, a steppe eagle, etc.) of the Olvinian School of animal style was formed on the local zoo- and ornithological basis. Images of fantastic animals (eagle- and lion-head griffins, etc.) also have a mediate Middle-Eastern origin.
The reasons for appearance and functioning of animal style in the antique Northern Black Sea Littoral were both internal (i.e. revival of rudimentary beliefs of Ionian immigrants in new historical and geographical conditions; the presence of the nobility engaged in the military-hunting and horse competitions, etc.), and external (i.e. the nomads' cultural influence on the views of Hellenic colonists, the presence of the craft manufacture aimed at a market in Hinterland, etc.).
In the course of the contacts of bearers of the Greek and barbarous arts (i.e. Scythians, Meotians, Savromatians, Sarmatians, Thracians, etc.), syncretic art emerges on the northern coast of the Black Sea Littoral whose form and content were defined by V.A.Iljinskaja as a "Greek-Scythian baroque of animal style". By the III century BC, the Olvinian School of animal style had virtually exhausted its spiritual and artistic potential and gradually degraded. However, its reminiscences in this or that form were traced up to the end of the antique epoch.
Monuments of animal style of the end of the IV - the III centuries BC are not so numerous in our material than those of the previous time. Among them are a metal plate and pommels with multifigure compositions representing scenes of laceration coming from Tiligulskii estuary region and Kosharskii fort. In our opinion, they were made under the significant Oriental influence due to the appearance of the advanced Sarmatian detachments in steppes and under the walls of antique cities of Northwest Black Sea Littoral. At that time ancient Greek masters continue to produce articles in animal style but their themes vary according to the tastes of new customers and the evolution of the notions of the Greeks living in Northern Black Sea Littoral.
V.L.Rostynov (Vladikavkaz, Russia)
ON SEMANTICS OF "BIG MAIKOP BARROWS" IN CENTRAL CAUCASUS (BY EVIDENCE OF BARROW 3 AT BRUT VILLAGE IN NORTH OSSETIA)
The object of research in this paper is the "Tsar" barrow of the Maikop culture. The unusual structure of the mound permits an assumption that they bear a complicated symbolical meaning. The analysis of a set of specific peculiarities of the barrow construction (the simultaneous erection of the first three mounds, their ellipsoidal form; coating the surface of the two inner mounds with a layer of bright yellow clay, erection of a clay platform in the form of a crescent in the southern part of the second mound) permits a conclusion that barrow architecture displays a cosmogonic plot: the World (Space) Egg Model; three world spheres the two of which are visible and one is invisible; the symbol of Moon as an abode of the dead where the dead person might achieve reincarnation.
It is interesting to note that the entire complex of the structural peculiarities of Brutski barrow considered is accounted for only in the Indo-European and Indo-Iranian sources (rituals, mythology). This enables us to assume that Maikop population adopted the Indo-European cosmogonic symbolism in the funeral rituals even at the early stages of its residency in the Central Caucasus. Taking into consideration the eruption of Maikop culture from Eastern Anatolia and the original attribution of its representatives to the north-Ubeyd layer, this conclusion seems rather unexpected. However, the facts revealed promote a new direction for investigations, i.e. studying the probable Indo-European aspect of the problem.
A.A.Tishkin, I.Yu.Leonova (Barnaul, Russia)
FUNERAL PRACTICE OF ALTAI BIJKENIAN CULTURE'S CARRIERS: SEMANTICS OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL COMPLEX
The Gorny Altai cemeteries of the Early Scythian time, dealt with in this paper, refer to the Bijkenian archaeological culture. They are complicated ritual complexes with the functions of funerary of the deceased and commemoration of ancestors, protection against evil power of the dead, the relationship with "forefathers", etc. In addition to the rites for the funerary-commemorational complex, necropoles were the sites for undertaking other sacral actions (in particular, those related to the cult of nature spirits) and astronomical observations. The barrows are located in chains, basically, along the south-west - north-east line. Their setting is connected with the ideas about the best arrangement of the sacral space and the peculiarities of the geographical landscape. The layout of the holy places of the Bijkenian culture had a number of characteristic features and parallels in the Chinese and Indo-Iranian traditions. The barrow for people of the culture considered presented the model of the universe and time, the man's and horse's dwelling place with "altars" and protective stones-obelisks in which the souls of the dead could take up their abode. The deceased were put predominantly on the left side with their heads towards the west or north-west. In this way the notions of time and space were manifested. Within the framework of mythological thinking the specified sector of the horizon was connected with the past, ancestors, the mystic, the black (the sun), autumn, battles and the war as a whole, but at the same time with immortality as a possibility of revival in the country of the dead. The writhed position may be a posture of sleep. The recorded situations and their analysis allowed us to reveal the dominant tradition of making burials in springtime which is similar to Iranian funeral practice. Other details of the funeral rite are accounted for in Indo-Iranian and Chinese literary sources which permit to trace the origin of influence of the abovementioned traditions on the outlook of people of the Bijkenian culture. The fact of placing a horse in barrows indicates the polysemantic nature of its image. It was a sacrificial animal since it was found in the structure assumed to be an altar. The victim was intended to provide the departure of deceased's soul from this world and a favourable fate in the other one. The horse was a guide taking the deceased's soul away to another world as both a horse and a man in the burial had the same orientation. This animal played a vital role in people's lives and in their religious beliefs. It seems to have been endowed with a special soul(souls), similar to human soul(souls).
T.Masumoto (Sakai, Japan)
CHINESE BRONZE MIRRORS (THE SEMIOTIC ASPECT)
Chinese bronze mirrors are considered as the media making varied semantic influence. It is demonstrated that the historical process of establishing states and their disintegration affected the mirror style and resulted in changes in the traditions of their manufacture which appeared, vanished, flourished, expanded and reappeared. This process was becoming more complicated, new messages gave rise to a new style with specific sign units which accumulated into information layers. An alteration in the mirror style can reflect people's response to a change in the situation in their state at a certain epoch. This response can be conventionally called striving for creativity in history with the inclination to create and vary creatively. Thus, it can be said that Chinese bronze mirrors can be considered a subject of archeology which can be useful in the explanation of the relationship between the above tendencies in time and space.
Z.V.Dode (Stavropol, Russia)
ARCHEOLOGICAL COSTUME AS REPRESENTATION OF HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL REALITY: ON METHOD OF RESEARCH
A costume displays the insoluble unity of material and spiritual values exhibited in various modes of cultural arrangement of reality. However, the methods of costume investigation commonly used by domestic scholars cannot disclose fully the potential of this cultural form as a cultural and historical source.
The author proposes a new representation method for studying the costume as a cultural form which most completely displays the phenomena of material and spiritual culture developing in the context of the historical process on the examples of costume complexes from the medieval ground burials of the North Caucasus. The method is based on the major trends within the framework of the hermeneutic-phenomenological tradition, which considers the artefact as a fact of history and culture. The representation method in conformity with costume investigation is based on the assumption that the specific historical and cultural information contained in the artefacts is much more comprehensive than that confined in the costume viewed as a complex of clothing, headgear, footwear and decorations. Isolation of the representation meaning from the primary artefact goes much further than the original interpretation of a costume as a set of clothing and decorations, making up a certain system of historical reality in which the considered artefacts were involved and under whose influence they changed.
The author emphasizes two basic features of representation as a method of research: the relevance or the logical agreement between the information inquiry and the message contained in the object, and the intentionality in which the intentions of the subject and the researcher are distinguished.
When studying the costume as the text, one should first of all restore its complex. In this connection the author proposes three types of costume reconstruction. The authentic reconstruction is fully based on the primary source and corresponds to the original. The apodictic reconstruction is reliable and irrefutable. It is based on the use of the totality of other sources (decorative, written, epic etc.) and on the analogies with other archeological complexes when the system-forming basis of the costume - clothing is lacking. In the abcsence of any evidence of the costume base, the hypothetical reconstruction can be used, which, nevertheless, should be based on valid assumptions, which however require corroboration.
The empirical idea about the object, its utilitarian and functional properties, the costume form, its constituting components, aesthetic and utilitarian preferences, the quality of the materials used permit to establish certain links between the artefacts and the natural environment, as well as the economic organisation of the society, i.e. the activities concerned with the manufacture of costume forms, the occupation of the population, the relief and climate conditions favouring the use of certain types of material, the style, the choice of colouring etc.
The semiotic level of representation is connected with ethno-social arrangement of the society, religious and magic ideas, political organisation, artistic and aesthetic ideas, as the costume is a marker of sex/age, property and social status, religious, ethnic and regional attribution etc. In the semiotic context the costume elements appear as signs-characters or signs-symbols bearing information virtually about all modes of spiritual arrangement of reality.
The historical level of analysis permits to elucidate not only the events or phenomena immediately displayed in the costume; cultural and historical interactions also reveal material-value contacts, semantic-sign relations, social and political links and ideological exchange. The culturological and historical levels of representation permit to establish invariant links between historical events and cultural phenomena.
The representation method opens the prospect for the new vision of not only the costume, but other artifacts as well, enabling one to consider them as cultural and historical phenomena.
D.A.Korol (Kiev, Ukraine)
MOTIFS OF 'HORSEMAN' AND 'WELCOMING GODDESS' ON BURIAL STONES OF SCANDINAVIA AND BLACK SEA NORTH LITTORAL
The paper focuses on the reconstruction of world vision in ancient societies by means of structural and semiotic interpretations of art memorials on the example of images on the burial monuments from the Scandinavian region (the Vendel period, VI-VIII c.) and the Black Sea North Littoral (IV BC - II AD).
The ultimate goal is elaboration of the mentality pattern in Scandinavians on the eve of the Vikings Epoch, in particular, using the semiotic comparative analysis of a number of mythological and depictive plots. Common things in the artistic representation canons of the northern ancient Germans and northern Iranians are elucidated. In the light of parallels, the narrative tradition included, generality of many precepts in the ethno-cultural paradigm has been traced.
As a result, a conclusion is made about certain processes of cultural exchange in the above societies (down to the establishment of common ideological elements in them). The place and time, as well as the feasible length of such contacts are specified.
M.S.Sergeyeva (Kiev, Ukraine)
STUDYING DECORATION OF BIG GOLDEN PECTORALS FROM CENTRAL PANAMA
The paper deals with the analysis of the decoration of big golden pectorals from Central Panama. This kind of products is referred to the scope of objects with symbolic functions used as a visual manifestation of political and sacral aspects of social leaders' power. The decoration corresponds to the functional purpose and symbolism of the objects themselves.
A set of personages represented on the big pectorals is confined to several variants. In all the cases they are the composite beings - zoomorphs or anthropozoomorphs. The basic zoomorphic characteristics of the personages in most cases correlate with three groups of animals, i.e. reptiles, bats and aquatic birds. All these animals are inhabitants of natural spheres opposed to the human world. The major aspect in the semantics of images is reptilian symbolism with the cosmological content in which the connection of the personages pictured to the supernatural world is emphasized. The beings of different mythological status are presented from the personage that judging by the attributes and abundance of their images is on one of the highest levels of the mythological hierarchy (the so-called "Crocodile God" or, in our terminology, "Reptile God") to the beings known only by the pectorals of Sitio Conte and apparently being of local significance.
Ceremonial and representative purposes of the pectorals, on the one hand, and their sacral content, on the other hand, were conducive to creation of the canonic iconography of the mythological personages pictured in them.
Orientation of the subject-matter of jewellery under consideration to the sphere of supernatural may be caused 1) by their apothropeic purpose (as an archaic adornment in general); 2) by their connection with the concept of a social leader's power including its ritual and magical aspects.
Decoration of the pectorals is thematically connected with the mythological symbolism which dominates the worldview of the local population. Accordingly, the "shaman" interpretation of the images generally made in the literature can hardly be the only approach to be used. The visual images in question and shaman ideology go back to the common layer of notions about the sacral. Although the personages that were pictured could be endowed with the abilities similar to those of shamans, they were primarily regarded as representatives of "another" world (identified with the sphere of nature) with a high rank in the mythological hierarchy. Appearance of pictures of such personages in the decor of jewellery with the representative functions could be connected with their ideological content and emphasize their sacral character.
I.F.Nikitinskii (Vologda, Russia)
ON TREE OF LIFE OF TIUNOVSKOYE SHRINE
This monument of archeology, a monument of the history of science of the 15th century is situated in one of the areas of Russia - the Vologda region. It had been found by the author and published by him in 1994. The Tiunovskoye shrine belonged to the ethnic subdivision of the Russian people that formed on the upper Kokshenga at that time - Kokshary. The population of the upper Kokshenga was heathen and buried their dead in the surface burials in the sacred groves - Kusty. By now the author has studied 93 graves in 5 burial sites and collected data on 15 sacred groves.
On the surface of the quadrangular, dome-shaped, focused on the four corners of the earth stone with the diameter up to 3 meters the whole arrangement of the world as it was conceived by the founders of the shrine is represented by means of symbols - petroglyphs and their blocks. The main symbol is the Tree of Life (the Tree of the World). It has a wide range of analogues in the world mythologies related to similar symbols. This symbol is very similar to the Tree of Life (the Sephirotic Tree) of Cabbala, which prevailed in Europe in the 15th century. Its angle to the horizon is 53?, which is equal to the angle of sun rise at our latitude on the day of midsummer in the 15th century. The height of the Tree of Life is equal to the sum of heights of a range of symbols: the god of hunting 8cm + the god of the cultivated space 13cm + the goddess - mother of all the living 21cm + the god of the sun and thunder 42cm + the heavenly ship 43cm = 127cm. 21cm and 42cm amount to a span and a cubit in the system of linear measures of our region in the 15th century. The size of figures of gods displays their importance in an economic annual cycle.
S.V.Pasynkov (Ryasan, Russia)
RHOMB AS SYMBOL OF MOON IN INDO-EUROPEAN, SLAVONIC AND CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS
Nowadays it is commonly believed that the semantics of rhombic symbols is generally reduced to the idea of fertility. Recent research in the field of archeoastronomy permits a somewhat different approach to this problem.
The numeric analysis enabled us to reveal the meaning of geometric ornaments. The number (algorithm) of signs located on the item corresponds to calendar cycles based on the movements of the Moon and the Sun. Geometric ornaments are virtually the numeric texts connected with certain symbols. The numeric characteristics of rhombic ornaments from the Bronze epoch to the Late Middle Ages is indicative of the time calculation by the Moon. This justifies referring the rhomb to the lunar symbols.
