Camel scenes in the rock art of the Minusinsk Basin

Abstract

102 Despite the fact that rock art sites in the Minusinsk Basin have been studied for more than a century, new images and even whole complexes are still being discovered in this region. Petroglyphs have recently been discovered at Bolshoi Ulaz Mount (Leontiev, Miklashevich, Mukhareva, 2005), at Lisichia Mount (Kovaleva, 2005), etc. Regretfully, many of the petroglyphs are in a poor state of preservation. Whilst some are partly destroyed others have been totally obliterated. As a result, it is often diffi cult to piece together a true picture of the “original” site. In such cases, archival and museum materials (such as drawings and traces of images made by scholars, artists, and individuals engaged in regional studies) are of great value. Sources of this kind contain traces of images from the Sulek rock art site that are now missing. Drawings of the rock art at Sulek located in the Minusinsk Basin are well known due to published materials collected by J.R. Aspelin’s expedition in 1897 (Appelgren-Kivalo, 1931). However, few are fully aware of the site’s poor state of preservation which is heavily spoiled by recent engravings and inscriptions which overlap the ancient images. Hence, the petroglyphs here have mostly been studied with the help of traces and drawings made by scholars in the past. In this respect, the drawings made by artist V.F. Kapelko who has been investigating rock art sites in the region since the 1970s are of particular importance. Although Kapelko’s drawings cannot always be considered accurate copies of the Sulek images, they do indicate images and compositions that had either not been noted earlier or that are presently damaged and missing. During the course of fi eld work conducted at Sulek by V.F. Kapelko in the 1980s and members of the Siberian Association for the Study of Prehistoric Art under the 2002 – 2006 UNESCO DOI: 10.1134/S1563011007040093 A.N. Mukhareva Kemerovo State University, Krasnaya 6, Kemerovo, 650043, Russia E-mail: mukhareva@mail.ru