Abstract
Rock art sites of the Urals are recorded in the area about 800 km along the line SN, from the Belaya River to the Vishera and Kolva Rivers. Starting from the 18th century, about 90 sites with ancient images have been revealed. From the moment they were discovered, they were called pisanitsa (pisanitsas, stones-pisantsas, “the Chud writings”). In the Urals, they are usually occupy some coastal rocks along rivers, less often lakes. The drawings are made mainly in red ocher with diff erent shades. Engraved images are known too. The number of drawings varies from one or two to several dozen. The repertoire of images includes fi gurative motifs – animals, birds, anthropomorphic and conditionally anthropomorphic creatures, several boats and handprints, non-fi gurative motifs, or geometric (various signs), as well as indefi nite motifs due to, as a rule, to their unsatisfactory preservation. The time of creation of rock “canvas” is approximately from the end of the 6th to 2nd millennium BC, but there are also the later drawings. Nine rock art sites in the basin of the Iset River are characterized in the paper, from the environs of Yekaterinburg to the threshold of Revun near the village of Beklenishcheva, Kamensky District of the Sverdlovsk Region. Unfortunately, some of them have not survived to this day and are known only from early publications. Only inexpressive spots of paint are visible on some sites. Site of Severskaya, on the Yelovyy Mys of Lake Melkoye (Isetskaya I site), as well as Palkinskaya and the Revun sites are of satisfactory preservation.
Keywords
Middle Urals, Iset River, ancient rock art sites, figurative and non-figurative motifs.
Anisimov, A.F. 1958: Religiya evenkov v istoriko-geneticheskom izuchenii i problemy proiskhozhdeniya pervobytnykh verovaniy [Evenk Religion in the Historical and Genetic Study and the Origin of Prehistoric Beliefs]. Moscow– Saint Petersburg.
Bers, E.M. 1951: Arkheologicheskaya karta Sverdlovska i ego okrestnostey [Archaeological map of Sverdlovsk and its environs]. In: A.Ya. Bryusov (ed.), Materialy i issledovaniya po arkheologii Urala i Priural’ya [Materials and Studies on the Archaeology of Ural and the Cis-Urals Area] 2 (Materialy i issledovaniya po arkheologii SSSR [Materials and Studies on the Archaeology of the USSR] 21)). Moscow–Leningrad, 182–243.
Chairkina, N.M. 2005: Eneolit Srednego Zaural’ya [Eneolithic of the Middle Trans-Urals]. Ekaterinburg.
Chernetsov, V.N. 1964: Naskal’nye izobrazheniya Urala [Rock Paintings of the Urals] (Svod arkheologicheskikh istochnikov [Corpus of Archaeological Sources] В4–12/1). Moscow.
Chernetsov, V.N. 1970: Naskal’nye izobrazheniya Urala [Rock Paintings of the Urals]: thesis for the degree of Doctor of History. Moscow.
Chernetsov, V.N. 1971: Naskal’nye izobrazheniya Urala [Rock Paintings of the Urals] (Svod arkheologicheskikh istochnikov [Corpus of Archaeological Sources] В4–12/2). Moscow.
Devlet, E.G. 2002: Pamyatniki naskal’nogo iskusstva [Rock Art Sites]. Moscow.
Zhul’nikov, A.M. 2006: Petroglify Karelii. Obraz mira i miry obrazov [Petroglyphs of Karelia. The Image of the World and the Worlds of Images]. Petrozavodsk.
Eliade, M. 1987: Kosmos i istoriya [Space and History]. Moscow.
Kivikas, P. 1995: Kalliomaalaukset – muinainen kuva-arkisto [Rock Art: an Ancient Picture Archive]. Jyväskylä.
Kulemzin, V.M. 1984: Chelovek i priroda v verovaniyakh khantov [Man and Nature in the Beliefs of the Khanty]. Tomsk.
Mosin, V.S., Epimakhov, A.V., Vybornov, A.A., Korolev, A.I. 2014: Khronologiya eneolita i ranney bronzy v ural’skom regione [Chronology of the Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age in the Ural Region]. Arkheologiya, etnografi ya i antropologiya Evrazii [Archeology, Ethnography and Anthropology of Eurasia] 60 (4), 41–53.
Napolskikh, V.V. 1992: Opyt rekonstruktsii semantiki Mal’tinskikh ornitomorfnykh izobrazheniy [Experience in reconstructing the semantics of Malta ornithomorphic images]. In: A.V. Golovnev (ed.), Model’ v kul’turologii Sibiri i Severa [Model in Cultural Studies of Siberia and the North]. Ekaterinburg, 66–73.
Petrin, V.T. 1985: Pisanitsa iz okrestnostey Sverdlovska [Pisanitsa from the environment of Sverdlovsk]. Sovetskaya arkheologiya [Soviet Archaeology] 3, 119–123.
Sher, Ya.A. 1980: Petroglify Sredney i Tsentral’noy Azii [Petroglyphs of Middle and Central Asia]. Moscow.
Shirokov, V.N. 2008: Sakral’naya topografi ya ural’skikh pisanits [Sacred topography of the Ural rock art]. In: N.M. Terebikhin (ed.), Pomorskie chteniya po semiotike kul’tury. Sakral’naya geografi ya i traditsionnye etnokul’turnye landshafty narodov Evropeyskogo Severa [Pomor Readings on the Semiotics of Culture. Sacred Geography and Traditional Ethno-Cultural Landscapes of the Peoples of the European North]. Arkhangelsk, 313–320.
Shirokov, V.N., Shirokova, N.A. 2016: Pisanitsa Revun (Sredniy Ural) [Pisanitsa Revun (Middle Urals)]. In: Sed’mye Bersovskie chteniya [Seventh Bersovsky Readings]. Ekaterinburg, 69–73.
Viktorova, V.D., Chairkina, N.M., Shirokov, V.N. 1997: Gora i vodoplavayushchaya ptitsa v mirovidenii drevnego ural’skogo naseleniya [Mountain and aquatic birds in the worldview of the ancient Ural population]. Ural’skiy istoricheskiy vestnik [Ural Historical Bulletin] 4, 40–65.