Abstract
The paper is devoted to the publication and cultural and chronological interpretation of images on a fragment of a stele which was a part of the Nizhnyaya Sooru funerary-memorial complex in the Central Altai. The object was discovered in 1981 during the excavations of Turkic enclosures by a group from the South Siberian archaeological expedition of the Kemerovo State University lead by A.S. Vasyutin. The decorated fragment and other fi nds were transferred into the storage of the museum of the Kemerovo State University’s Archeology Department. At that time, interpretation of imagery on the stele was complicated due to the technical diffi culties of copying the fine interlacing engraved lines which as a net covered the whole surface of the small fragment. For the same reason the object remained unpublished. The authors describe a modern technique for documenting fine engravings in rock art, the application of which resulted in a digital multilayer graphic copy (tracing) of the stele fragment. Studying the pecked and engraved fi gures made it possible to establish the sequence in which they were applied. Initially a human face (only mustache and mouth are preserved) was rendered in a pecking technique and in the stylistics of Turkic sculptures, and the stele was installed in the enclosure. An analysis of the structural features of the constructions as well as the few items of inventory recorded during the excavation allows to date the enclosures of the Nizhnyaya Sooru complex to the Kudyrghe stage of the culture of the Early Medieval Turks (second half of the 6th to the fi rst half of the 7th century AD). Respectively, the initial image on the stele dates to that time. Later the stele had been in use just as a rock surface, convenient for rendering images. In the same (Turkic) period images of an archer, animals and arrows, partly overlapping each other, were engraved on it in a distinctive style. Presumably somewhere in the Late Medieval – New Age the patinated Turkic engravings were overlaid with more primitive images of animals, arrows and numerous scratched random lines. The stele was then either deliberately broken, or destroyed by natural causes. By the time of the excavation, the fragments had silted up and only two of them were found. The paper publishes materials from the expedition by A. S. Vasyutin in 1981, modern photographs and tracings of the object, as well as analogies to the images revealed on the stele.
Keywords
Nizhnyaya Sooru, Altai, Early Middle Ages, Turks, enclosure, stele, petroglyphs, engravings.
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