Личины Моховского Лога и памятники окуневской культуры в горах Оглахты

Abstract

The paper considers rock art sites, statuary and funerary sites of the Okunev culture (the Bronze Age in the Minusinsk Basin) which are known within the territory of the Oglakhty mountainous massif, one of the largest archaeological complexes in the Republic of Khakassia. Among the vast number of rock art images in Oglakhty, only a few are so far attributed to the Okunev culture, which is distinguished by its art. The author introduces into scholarly curculation and describes in detail the effigies on the rocks at Mokhovsky Log, a recently discovered rock art site; and considers the problems of their cultural and chronological attribution, as well as of some other relevant rock art images in the Oglakhty mountains. Statuary sites, which the Okunev culture is especially known for, are also not numerous in Oglakhty: one statue with a face-mask is now lost, and two others that have been recently discovered, were reused as tomb stones in the kurgan constructions of the later Tagar culture. Materials from the excavations of the Okunev burials in the Krasny Yar cemetery are also presented. Excavated by E.B. Vadeckaya in 1972 in the southern foothills of the Oglakhty mountains, the cemetery containedburials of the Okunev culture, both embedded in some barrows of the preceding Afanasievo culture (Krasny Yar I), and forming independent barrows (Krasny Yar II). They belong to different stages of the Okunev culture. Interesting and rare materials have been found in these graves; moreover, for the first time it was stratigraphically traced that at least 100 years passed between Afanasievo and embedded Okunev burials (so, the cultures did not coexist, as was previously thought). The materials obtained from the cemetery require further research by modern methods, as well as their complete publication. The author concludes that in the mountains and foothills of the Oglakhty there are evidences of the existence of Okunev culture at different stages of its development; their small (compare to the sites of other cultures) number is due to the insufficient investigation of the territory; and the prospects for new discoveries and replenishment the body of sources for the Okunev culture are associated with the application of modern methods of revealing and documenting archaeological heritage