A new subject in the study of the Great Shigir Idol

Abstract

This article describes the views proposed by researchers over the years on the dating of the Great Shigir Idol (originally found in a Ural peat bog) and the interpretation of images carved on the body of the wooden sculpture. Special attention is paid to finds from the Volvoncha I settlement (the Eneolithic) located on the Konda River in Western Siberia: these discoveries allow a comparison with the anthropomorphic creatures on the idol, composed in the skeleton version of the X-ray style. Analogues of the Shigir images can be found among figurative images in cave carvings. An anthropomorphic image from the Far Hall of the Ignatievka cave allows us to not only identify the sex of the characters at the base of the idol, but also to propose a radical revision of the age of the Shigir sculpture. 14C calibrated dates obtained in Russia and Germany indicate that the larch from which the idol is carved is from the early Holocene, which demonstrates the validity of searching for parallels in other artefacts of late Paleolithic art. This is relevant to not only cave painting, but also to small art objects found in Western European monuments, which implement similar artistic techniques like the transfer of perspective. It is from this point of view that the carvings - chevrons above some of the likenesses on the idol – are studied in this paper. Each element of the chevron reflects a separate figurative image, following the principle “pars pro toto”. In the Shigir sculpture, one can discern a new iconographic canon in the representation of anthropomorphic images, with wide variation in the X-ray style.