KUNDUSUK ROCK ART SITE: THE RESULTS OF 2020 STUDY

Писаница Кундусук - уникальный объект наскального искусства в горах Западного Саяна. Наскальные рисунки обследованы авторами в 2020 г. Скала с рисунками находится на правом берегу реки Амыл. Выявлено 16 камней с изображениями антропоморфных лиц без контура «джойского» типа. Датируются рисунки эпохой ранней бронзы и отражают художественные традиции окуневской культуры. Объект маркирует один из центров как сухопутных, так и речных древних коммуникаций. Памятник, видимо, являлся древним культовым местом. Здесь совершались ритуальные действия и минеральной краской изображались антропоморфные объекты поклонения для успешного преодоления речных и других препятствий. Лица могли отражать облик духов места, реки, маркировать этнокультурную принадлежность древних художников. Kundusuk rock art site (“Pisanitsa Kundusuk”) is a unique object of rock art in the Western Sayan Mountains. The rock drawings were examined by the authors in 2020. The rock with the drawings is located on the right bank of the Amyl River. Sixteen stones with images of anthropomorphic faces without the contour of the “Dzhoi” type were revealed. The drawings date back to the early Bronze Age and refl ect the artistic traditions of the Okunev culture. The object marks one of the centers of both land and river ancient communications. Apparently, the site was an ancient cult place. Here ritual actions were performed and anthropomorphic objects of worship were depicted with mineral paint to successfully overcome river and other obstacles. Faces could refl ect spirits of a place, a river, mark the ethno cultural identity of ancient artists.

IMAGES OF A BULL IN ROCK ART OF THE ANGARA

Изучение древнего наскального искусства требует междисциплинарного подхода. Cотрудничество исследователей петроглифов и палеозоологов позволяет провести реконструкцию состава палеофауны региона, помогает в интерпретации териоморфных образов. Предметом изучения данной статьи являются похожие на быков изображения в наскальном искусстве р. Ангара. Многие изображения датируются эпохой неолита - ранней бронзы. Причины их появления в таежном наскальном искусстве могли быть различными: влияние художественной традиции окуневской культуры с юга; стилизация образа лося или оленя; мифологизация образов таежных животных; наличие для древнего художника реальной натуры - дикого быка. Согласно данным палеозоологии в эпоху голоцена на Ангаре обитали реликтовые животные - бизоны, туры. Возможно, они обитали и на Среднем Енисее. Это позволило высказать предположение, что в наскальном искусстве изображен дикий бык, на которого охотился древний человек. The study of ancient rock art requires an interdisciplinary approach. Active cooperation of rock art researchers and paleozoologists makes it possible to reconstruct the composition of the paleofauna, to interpret theriomorphic images. The subject of the article is images similar to bulls in rock art on the Angara River. Many of the images date back to the Neolithic - early Bronze Age. The reasons for their appearance in taiga zone rock art could be diff erent: the infl uence of artistic tradition of the Okunev culture from the South; stylization of the image of an elk or a deer; mythologization of the images of taiga zone animals; the presence of a real animal in the nature - a wild bull. According to paleozoological data of the Holocene Epoch the Angara River valley was inhabited by relict animals - bisons, tours. Perhaps, they also lived in the Middle Yenisei. Therefore, we suggest that some petroglyphs depict a wild bull, which was hunted by an ancient man.

Mineralogical Characterization of Early Bronze Age Pottery from the Svilengrad-Brantiite Site, Southeastern Bulgaria

Several pottery sherds from the Svilengrad-Brantiite site, Bulgaria, were mineralogically and petrographically analyzed. The aim was to add information to the very scarce material data available for Early Bronze Age pottery in the southeastern Thrace plain, Bulgaria, in order to examine a possible raw-material source of the pottery. The characterization techniques applied were optical microscopy (OM), petrographic microscopy (PM), scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The pottery samples consisted of two typological groups: a local-made type and a cord-impressed decoration type influenced by foreign cultures. All of the samples were produced from fine clay pastes that had a quite similar composition, with abundant mineral grains of similar mineral composition and fragments of metamorphic and granitic rocks. The chemical compositions of each mineral in the grains and fragments were almost identical, and consistent with those from metamorphic and granitic rocks from the Sakar-Strandja Mountains near the study site. The clay paste compositions corresponded to those of illite/smectite mixed-layer clay minerals or mixtures of illite and smectite, and the clay-mineral species were consistent with those in Miocene–Pleistocene or Holocene sediments surrounding the site.

Patterns in the Population History of Northern Eurasia from the Mesolithic to the Early Bronze Age, Based on Craniometry and Genetics

This study examines the craniometric differentiation of Northern Eurasian groups with reference to genetic and partly linguistic facts. Measurements of 66 series of male crania from that territory, dating to various periods from the Mesolithic to the Early Bronze Age, were subjected to statistical methods especially destined for detecting spatial patterns, specifi cally gradients. Using the nonmetric multidimensional scaling of the matrix of D2 distances corrected for sample size, a two-dimensional projection of group constellation was generated, and a minimum spanning tree, showing the shortest path between group centroids in the multivariate space, was constructed. East-west clines in Northern Eurasia, detected by both genetic and craniometric traits, likely indicate not so much gene fl ow as isolation by distance, resulting from an incomplete evolutionary divergence of various fi lial groups constituting the Boreal meta-population. The western fi lial component, which, in Siberia and Eastern Central Asia, is mostly represented by Afanasyevans, has evidently made little contribution to the genetic makeup of later populations. The eastern fi lial component, which had appeared in the Cis-Baikal region from across Lake Baikal no later than the Neolithic, admixed with the autochthonous Paleosiberian component. The latter’s principal marker—the ANE autosomal component—had been present in Siberia since the Upper Paleolithic. Likewise autochthonous were both Eurasian formations—Northern and Southern; statis tical analysis has made it possible to make these more inclusive, whereby the former has been expanded in the eastern direction to include the Kuznetsk Basin, and the latter westwards, to the Middle Irtysh. Nothing suggests that Eastern European groups had taken part in the origin of either the Northern Eurasian formation or the proto-Uralic groups.

The smelting of copper in the third millennium cal BC Trentino, north-eastern Italy

This paper presents observations and analyses on seven slag pieces from two third-millennium cal BC (Late Copper Age/Early Bronze Age) rock shelters in the Trentino, north-eastern Italy: La Vela di Valbusa and the Riparo di Monte Terlago. We review previous work on contemporary slags from the region and show that the smelting did not follow the well-known ‘Timna’, ‘Eibner’ or so-called ‘Chalcolithic’ copper smelting processes. We show that ethnographic accounts of copper smelting in the Himalayas (Sikkim and Nepal) illuminate the smelting process, in particular the lack of preliminary roasting or ore beneficiation by washing, the use of slags as fluxes for the first smelt (matte smelting) and the use of wooden (?) implements to lift the hot slags from the furnace during the smelt. The rock inclusions in the slag are consistent with an ore origin from mines at Calceranica or Vetriolo, as previously reported in the literature.

In the Sorraia River Valley (Coruche, Portugal): Settlement Dynamics of Ancient Peasant Societies on the Left Bank of the Lower Tagus River (5500 to 1800 B.C.E.)

This article is the result of archaeological and paleoenvironmental investigations carried out within the scope of the ANSOR project in the Sorraia valley (Coruche), on the left bank of the Lower Tagus. In the analysis of settlement dynamics between 5500 and 1800 a.n.e. we considered four moments: 1) The first peasant societies of the ancient Neolithic; 2) The Middle and Late Neolithic; 3) Chalcolithic; 4) The Early Bronze Age. The Sorraia valley was also framed in the framework of the Center and South of Portugal during the period under analysis. Interpretative models are presented for changes in the implantation patterns in the four stages under study, oscillating between paleoenvironmental factors and the socio-economic changes registered in the old peasant societies.