KHAKASSIA, Aug 23 – RIA Tomsk. Archaeologists of Tomsk State University (TSU) and the State Hermitage Museum found a unique image of a wounded animal at the bottom of the grave at the subsoil burial ground of Oglakhty; this is one of the few works of art of the early Tashtyk culture, RIA Tomsk correspondent reports from the scene.
Earlier it was reported that scientists of TSU and the State Hermitage Museum since 2020 are conducting a comprehensive study of the subsoil burial ground Oglakhty in Bograd district of the Republic of Khakassia. In 2021 they explored two tombs belonging to the Tashtyk archaeological culture ((I – VII centuries AD). Earlier, unique wooden objects, utensils, the remains of a woman wearing a plaster funerary mask and the remains of her companion's cremation were found in the first grave.
"At the end of the work we had a surprising discovery. On one of the floorboards (most likely parts of some kind of construction, re-used to line the floor) we found an engraved image of a hooved animal - either a goat or a deer - with an arrow stuck in its croup. This is very rare, as art objects were almost never found in the early Tashtyk graves," curator of the Oglakhty collection of the State Hermitage Museum Svetlana Pankova said.
According to her, only carved wooden buckles, mummy tattoos, a carved bone pin with figures of two goats and one engraving on birch bark in a grave from the same period have been found on early Tashtyk monuments in the previous decades.
"Because the images found were isolated, we didn't understand at all what kind of art this population had. Now we will understand it better. But most importantly, we could not identify the petroglyphs of the Minusinsk Hollow of this period - what was carved by contemporaries of our buried, and what by bearers of earlier or later cultures. Now we have a chance to do that," Pankova said.
In addition, the drawing of a wounded animal allows to establish the relationship of two traditions: engraving from early Tashtyk graves and a later one from burial vaults, where carved plaques with multifigure compositions of war and hunting were found.
The Tashtyk culture is an archaeological culture of southern Siberia in the Iron Age (I – VII centuries A.D.). Two types of burial traditions are revealed at the burial grounds.
The first is ground graves, usually containing mummified remains and human-sized funerary "dolls" with cremation remains (burnt human bones) embedded in them. The mummies have plaster masks with original ornaments on their faces. In later period (V - VII centuries) the tradition of large burial vaults containing remains of up to 200 people appears.
