The Oldest Art of Siberia

Pavel V. Volkov, Liudmila V. Lbova, Richard L. Bland

Description

Primitive art is inseparable from primitive consciousness and can be correctly understood only with the correct socio-cultural context. This book examines the ancient art of Siberia as part of the integral whole of ancient society.

Sujets

• Social Science
• Prehistoric
• HISTORY
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Folclore
• Prehistory
• Archaeology
• Ethnography
• General officer
• Siberia
• Social sciences
• Russia
• History of Russia
• Anthropology
• Art
• General
• Migration
• Folklore
• Russie

Informations

• Publié par: Academica Press
• Date de parution: 28 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781680534573
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

The Oldest Art of Siberia: Technologies, Forms, Symbols
by
Liudmila V. Lbova and Pavel V. Volkov
Translated by Richard L. Bland
Academica Press Washington~London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lbova, Liudmila V. (author) | Volkov, Pavel V. (author) | Bland, Richard L. (translator)
Title: The oldest art of siberia : technologies, forms, symbols | Lbova, Liudmila V., Volkov, Pavel V., Bland, Richard L.
Description: Washington : Academica Press, 2022. | Includes references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022941203 | ISBN 9781680534566 (hardcover) | 9781680534573 (e-book)
Copyright 2022 Liudmila V. Lbova
Contents
Preface
Translator’s Introduction
Introduction
Part 1 Mobile Art in The Context of The Development of Cultural and Social Phenomena in The Paleolithic of Siberia
Personal Decorative Items (“Ornaments”)
Sculpture
Artifacts with Engravings
Prestige Items
Use of Pigments
Objects of Mobile Art in the Context of the Iconic Systems of the Paleolithic of Siberia
Part 2 Technological features of The Production of Objects of Siberian Mobile Art
The Early Stage of the Late Paleolithic
Denisova Cave
Khotyk
Kara-Bom
Malaya Syya
The Classical Period of the Late Paleolithic
Ust’-Kova
Mal’ta
The Final Paleolithic
Малtаt
Ushki
General Characteristics of the Tools of the Late Paleolithic
Dynamics of the Evolution of Technology for the Production of Mobile Art Objects in the Late Paleolithic of Siberia
Part 3 Catalog of Personal Decorative Art of Southern Siberian Sites
Altai
Denisova Cave
Kara-Bom
Maloyalomanskaya Cave
Strashnaya Cave
Yenisei Siberia
Malaya Syya
Ust’-Kova
Angara Region
The Gerasimova Site (Pereselencheskii Punkt)
Shchapova 1
Mamony II
Mal’ta
Transbaikalia
Kamenka
Khotyk
Conclusion
Literature
Abbreviations
Figures
Figure 1. Personal jewelry. The initial stage of the Upper Paleolithic (50,000 to 40,000 BP) (1–18. Denisova Cave; 19, 38, 39. Kamenka; 21–31. Khotyk; 34–36. Podzvonkaya; 32, 33. Kara-Bom; 37. Maloyalomnskaya).
Figure 2. Denisova Cave, chloritolite bracelet (after Derevyanko et al., 2008).
Figure 3. Malaya Syya, geometric shaped artifacts with holes (Lbova et al., 2014).
Figure 4. Personal jewelry, items with decoration. Early stage of the Upper Paleolithic (40,000–35,000 to 30,000–28,000 BP) (1–9. Yanskaya site; 10–13. Malaya Syya; 18, 20. Khotyk-2; 15. Mamony; 17. Shchapovo; 16, 19, 21. Pereselencheskii punkt).
Figure 5. Pereselencheskii punkt, pendant with edge decoration (after Kogai et al., 2007).
Figure 6. Khotyk, level 2. Decorated artifact (after Lbova 2019).
Figure 7. Kamenka-A, decorated bird bone (whistle) (after Lbova, Volkov, and Kozhevnikova 2010).
Figure 8. Mal’ta, a child’s burial and accompanying inventory (after Gerasimov 1931; Lbova 2021).
Figure 9. Mal’ta, a fragment of a wide tiara.
Figure 10. Personal jewelry. The “classical” stage of the Upper Paleolithic (25,000–23,000 to 20,000–18,000 BP) (1–16. Mal’ta; 17, 22–25. Ust’-Kova; 18–20. Listvenka; 21. Afontova Gora).
Figure 11. Zoomorphic and anthropomorphic sculpture. The “classical” stage of the Upper Paleolithic (25,000–23,000 to 20,000–18,000 BP) (1–8. Mal’ta; 9–10. Ust’-Kova).
Figure 12. Mal’ta. Ornamented child image.
Figure 13. Mal’ta, figurine of an adult woman.
Figure 14. Objects of prestige of the Upper Paleolithic (1. Chernoozer’e; 2. Achinskaya site; 3. Studenoe; 4, 5, 7, 9. Mal’ta; 6. Yanskaya site; 8. Afontova Gora).
Figure 15. Yanskaya site, ornamented ladle.
Tables
Table 1. Sites of the Early Stage of the Upper Paleolithic.
Table 2. Typological Characteristics of Objects of Personal Ornamentation of the Early Stage of the Upper Paleolithic.
Preface
This book, The Oldest Art of Siberia: Technologies, Forms, Symbols , reveals new comprehensive approaches and modern methods of studying the Paleolithic art of Siberia.
The world of primitive art has always been mysterious, and to this day is surrounded by a halo of uncertainty and is philosophically ambiguous in its concepts. In this regard, one of the main problems remains relevant—the problem of the origin of art in the Paleolithic era, and sharp discussions have been held in the scholarly community since the discovery of the first graphic works in the caves of France in the 19th century.
The vast territories of Siberia in the late Paleolithic were expanses of cold steppes and forest tundra, and under these conditions man not only survived, but used complex technologies of stone and bone processing.
In our opinion, the early stages of the formation of a completely new, previously unknown in nature “spiritual personification of a man” marked the beginning of the “Siberian civilization.” About 25,000 years ago, the first works of ancient art appeared in Siberia, made by people from mammoth tusk, horns of reindeer and red deer, animal teeth, and, less often, from stone. In recent years, in the foothills of the Altai in Denisova Cave, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences A. P. Derevyanko found the oldest examples of works of art, these finds are about 50,000 years old.
An ancient concept of realization and transmission of ideas and meanings to other generations through graphic and sculptural images had emerged.
Many researchers of primitive art are passionate about the desire to penetrate into the mystery of the technological and spiritual world of man, and his religious search related to the surrounding world and the universe. Works of art in the Stone Age were indispensable conditions for the life of primitive communities, objects of aesthetic sensations, and magical events.
The authors of the book, well-known historians and archaeologists, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Lyudmila Valentinovna Lbova and Doctor of Historical Sciences Pavel Vladimirovich Volkov have shown new developments and methods of microscopic, spectral, experimental, and traceological analysis of bone and stone artifacts in a short narrative about the ancient art of Siberia, as well as to identify the tools used to create ancient sculptures and the graphic and other artifacts of primitive art.
The authors of the book, in addition to the morphological description and manufacturing technology, made an analysis of mineralogical paints on objects of ancient art using an electron microscope, which in the future will allow seeing the colors of the world of man and its meanings in the Stone Age.
The text of the present work contains much new scientific data that are useful and necessary for understanding the distant past of mankind, not only for scholars but also for everyone who is interested in the origin of primitive art, early forms of religious practices, and emerging systems of power and social structures.
N. I. Drozdov
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor
Honored Scholar of the Russian Federation
Translator’s Introduction
This book by L. V. Liudmila and P. V. Volkov 1 was originally published as Древнейшее искусство Сибири (технологии, формы, символы) by Sankt-Peterb. politekhn. un-t im. Petra Velikogo; Novosib. gos. un-t.: St. Petersburg, 2021.
A number of words, particularly names, have to be brought into English from Russian. How is this done? Every translation, and particularly from Russian to English, has the problem of finding a suitable form of transliteration. None of the three systems available (U.S. Board of Geographic Names [BGN], Library of Congress [LOC], or “Linguistic” system [Ling]) was felt to be entirely adequate. I have therefore created my own system. In this I use some of the BGN system with a slightly modified version of the LOC. For example, the Russian “e” (“ye” of BGN) is written as “e,” following LOC. The Russian “ë” is also written as “e” (not as “yo”), following Ling. The Russian “э” is written as “e,” following BGN. Both the Russian “и” and the “й” are transliterated as “i,” unlike any of the three systems. The Russian “ю” and “я” are written as “yu” and “ya” respectively, following the BGN. The Russian soft sign, which is often dropped in transliterations or replaced with an “i,” is retained here as an apostrophe, following BGN.
I have also settled, as much as possible, on one ending for words, as the English language dictates, rather than providing the appropriate ending (masculine, feminine, neuter, plural/nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional) that can occur in Russian. And having 24 possible grammatical endings is not the end of it. In the masculine nominative, for a name ending in “-sky” there are at least five possible endings that can be found in English (“-sky,” “-skiy,” “-skij,” “-skii,” “-ski”). In addition, there are aberrant spellings that have been accepted in the literature.
Why do I not pick one system or another? All three systems (BGN, LOC, and Linguistic) use diacritics, or something similar, making library searches difficult. The BGN uses an umlauted e (ë); the Linguistic system uses a number of diacritics, such as č, š, ž, and others; and the LOC, most problematic, uses an arc between some pairs of letters, such as and All the letters in my system are standard Roman letters that can be typed into library search engines.
I would like to thank Anna Gokhman for reviewing the work for mistranslations and Nan Coppock, without whom this project could not have been completed. Most of all I must thank Professors Liudmila Lbova and Pavel Volkov for permitting their work to be published in English.
Richard L. Bland
Courtesy Research Associate
University of Oregon
Museum of Natural & Cultural History
732 East 22n Avenue
Eugene, Oregon
[e-mail]

1 Liudmila Valentinovna Lbova, Institute of Archeology and Ethnography Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 17 Akademika Lavrent’eva Ave., Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia ( [e-mail] ).
Pavel Vladimirovich Volkov, Novosibirsk State University, Pirogova st