Change and Continuity in the Prehistoric Rock Art of East Siberia

Abstract

Four centuries of rock art exploration and research in Siberia resulted in considerable achievements in documentation, cultural and chronological attributions of style and traditions and learning about ancient ritual practices related to rock art. However, the range of interpretational frameworks has remained rather limited, and the active role rock art played in prehistoric ethno-cultural processes has been overlooked. Rock art motifs and styles have been by default considered as mere markers of ethno-cultural groupings and migrations. This thesis continues a long-established Soviet/Russian tradition of considering rock art sites in their archaeological context but poses and answers new questions which are relevant not only for Siberian but also global rock art research, namely, why rock art was created, why specific styles emerged and why changes in rock art production occurred. These questions are explored through anthropological perspectives on ethnicity, identity, community and symbolism. Aiming to answer these questions, macro ethno-cultural and social processes that took place in East Siberia in the prehistoric period are reconsidered through the development of rock art styles and traditions. Importantly, this PhD is primarily fieldwork based because publications available for the rock art of East Siberia contain only black-and-white drawings and few low-quality black-and-white photographs. This research is focused on East Siberia which lies east of the Yenisey River, and specifically deals with the following regions: 1) Cis-Baikal, an area to the west from Lake Baikal; 2) Trans-Baikal, an area to the east from Lake Baikal which includes Zabaykalsky Krai and Buryatia; and 3) Sakha Republic (Yakutia). This project’s fieldwork was carried out in Sakha Republic (Yakutia) and Trans-Baikal. In total, 108 rock art sites with more than 6,000 designs were recorded. In addition, rock art sites in the Lower Amur River basin and Tomskaya Pisanitsa in West Siberia were surveyed during this fieldwork. Prior to this PhD project, rock art sites of the Upper Lena River in Cis-Baikal were visited by the author to gain better understanding of the area’s rock art. This thesis is focused on three chronological rock art groups: 1) the earliest, possibly Paleolithic rock art, 2) Neolithic rock art, and 3) Bronze Age rock art styles and traditions. The concept of style is employed as an analytical tool to investigate diachronic and spatial patterns. Several rock art styles and traditions, such as Amur, Angara, Selenga and Kyakhta, were better defined, and their chronology was elaborated based on the archaeological record and analogues in art objects from archaeological contexts. Such an accurate placement of rock art in time and space allowed the exploration of the role rock art played in constructing and reconstructing ethno-cultural identities, which contributes to the wider field of archaeology and cultural anthropology. The most important observation made in this research addresses the questions of why rock art is created, why specific styles and traditions emerge and why changes in rock art occur. Rock art sites create and maintain a strong connection between people, their past and their land. Rock art does not just reflect group or individual identities but helps construct them through powerful emotional attachments. The emergence or change of rock art styles occurs in a situation of major cultural changes, the reasons and dynamics of which may vary. The important factor is that people had to protect their tradition, culture and well-being in a situation of threat to their ethno-cultural continuity. In protecting continuity, it is inevitable changes in a rock art tradition occur. It becomes highly important to mark rocks with symbols of now ‘hot’ identity thus expressing belongingness, and those marks remain there for millennia continuing to structure identities of those who claim their belongingness to these places afterward. Specific styles and motifs become these symbols which need to be threefold – exhibiting the connection with the past, expressing a new identity and being perceived by an outsider. Therefore, a rock art tradition/style simultaneously features continuity, change and similarity to other synchronous traditions/styles which is a shared field of interaction. This view explains why rock art styles do not fit into neat culture-historical frameworks and do not have clear-cut temporal and spatial limits. This explanatory framework can be applied elsewhere in any other study on rock art and identity. This PhD thesis not only contributes to Siberian rock art research in a major new way but also shows many new directions for future rock art research globally.