Transcultural traditions of North-West Siberia in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age

More than two thousand years ago there were surprisingly stable, strong and unique traditions in existence in the North of West Siberia. We define them as long and transcultural. They are known as long, due to the substantial duration in time. Some of them began in the Neolithic Age (end of V - IV millennium BC) and existed up until Early Bronze Age (the first half of II millennium BC). They are defined as transcultural as they survived a consequent change of a few archeological cultures: Neolithical Ches-Tiy-Yag culture, Eneolithical Yasunskaya culture, Early Bronze Sartynyinskaya culture and Vari-Hadita. By far we can note three traditions of the defined above type: special style of ornamentation of ceramic, presence of uniquely boat-shaped vessels, specific style of bird drawings on pottery vessels. A refined and specific decorative phenomenon, which we define as a style of Specific (Honeycomb type) North Geometrizm has its routes in the Neolithic Age, but reached its zenith in the Early Bronze Age. Its signature features are complex geometrical compositions, comprising of rhombuses and honeycomb type structures. A no less colorful tradition is the practice of the manufacture of boat-shaped vessels. In contrast to other forest areas of Northern Eurasia where such items are extremely rare, in the West Siberian arctic and subarctic cultures their share is unusually high and ranges from 10 to 15%. In the Neolithic Age boat-shaped vessels are close to their proposed prototype - real boats - canoes. In the Eneolithic era model boats transformed into dishes with an oval mouth. In the cultures of the Early Bronze Age, boat-shaped vessels were remarkably diverse. Along with containers having an oval and sharp-cornered mouth, there were absolutely exclusive dishes of complex design with sculptural decoration beaters, which were present in these cultures. "Ornithomorphic" decoration tradition was born and developed in the framework of the mentioned above ornamental style, this being its peculiar emanation. Rhombuses and hexagons (honeycombs) were the main unchangable elements of which the body of the bird was formed. Without a doubt, vessels with birds had a special status. We tend to regard them as figurative and graphical ideograms which were comprised from important mythological texts. The above mentioned traditions have very little to do with the culture of life-maintenance, but instead are inseparable from myth, ritual and art. There are reasons to believe that they mark not only cultural, but also ethnic and cultural area.

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