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V.Ya. Shumkin (Saint Petersburg) – Mobile and Monumental Art of the Ancient Population of the Kola Peninsula

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Abstract

Images on rock surfaces (petroglyphs and paintings), which are so abundant (more than 300 separate locations) in northern Fennoscandia, as well as similar symbols on ceramics, bone and horn products, and stone crafts do not often attract the attention of researchers. And they, undoubtedly, like figurative images, have been part of the arsenal of creative searches of our distant ancestors since ancient times and refl ect their worldview, captured by visual means. The paintings of the Rybachiy Peninsula are the only monument of this type in the entire space of the Russian north. The petroglyphs of Kanozero, along with such objects as Alta and Vingen (Norway), Nemforsen (Sweden), Vyg and Onego (Karelia), are among the largest (each has more than 1000 images) rock galleries of the hunting tradition of Fennoscandia and are so far the only such monument in the entire Russian Arctic. Modern studies of such images on petroglyphs using night photo-fixation with special powerful lighting directed at an angle to the surface with knockouts, other technical tricks, including the use of a technique based on the creation of 3D models using photogrammetry, and obtaining pseudo rubbings do not violate the natural surface and allow you to identify new images and clarify the outline of already known ones. The author follows the postulate that true human behavior and its conscious activity in general begins with the use of symbols, thanks to which the final separation of man from the animal environment occurred.

Keywords

Fennoscandia, Rybachy, Pyaive, Kanozero, Chalmn-Varre, rock paintings, petroglyphs, symbols, ornaments.

Vladimir Ya. Shumkin

Institute of the History for Material Culture of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia

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