The system of ornamental elements in animal-style images from the Ulandryk I burial ground

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the system of ornamental elements on animal style products from the Ulandryk I. The purpose of the study is to identify and classify ornamental elements in zoomorphic and ornithomorphic images. The subject of the study, therefore, are objects with zoomorphic images from mounds 1-4, 6 and 12 of the Ulandryk I. The group of monuments in the context of one burial was chosen mainly for two reasons. Firstly, objects with zoomorphic images were found only in these burial mounds. Secondly, the study of the data on the dating of the monument by the method of wood-ring analysis showed that these mounds were built within 10 years – in 308-298 BC. A short time interval for the creation of mounds allows us to consider the ornamental system presented in their images as a single whole, without separation into individual mounds. The article suggests using the method of formal analysis to clarify the description of ornaments available in the works of V.D. Kubarev – to divide them into elements and motifs, as well as to make a classification. This classification makes it possible to identify ornamental elements characteristic of zoomorphic images and clarify the boundaries of the use of various ornamental elements in the art of the Pazyryk culture. The scientific novelty of the study is predetermined by the absence in Russian historiography of works describing the system of ornamental elements in the images of the animal style of the burial ground, as well as the lack of a developed methodology for such a description in relation to the archaeological materials of the Pazyryk culture. The study of the materials of V.D. Kubarev's excavations, presented by him in a 1987 monograph, as well as the latest publications of the materials of the burial ground by G.V. Kubarev, revealed that despite the presence of ornamental elements both in the images of animal style and in objects of weapons, costume, horse equipment, there is no unified system and the described structure of the ornamental system based on the materials of the burial ground. Researchers identify individual motifs and elements on clothing items, but do not correlate them with similar ones in animal-style images. The relevance is due to the interest in studying various aspects of the meanings of zoomorphic images and ornamental elements in the context of the art of the Scythian-Siberian world.