Iconography of birdlike images with spread wings in Kulai repousse

The article presents the classification of birdlike bronze images with spread wings, upon the consideration of characters and their location in the compositional space, in Kulai cultural and historic community in the Early Iron Age in Western Siberia. Depending on the combination of images the following groups of images were singled out: the bird; the bird-anthropoid; the bear-bird; the bird-anthropoid-bear. According to the number of heads of a syncretic character, the groups further subdivide into images with one and three heads. Based on the posture of heads, the images are differentiated between one-headed and three-headed characters. One-headed characters are represented by profile, full-face images and headless casts. Three-headed characters, in their turn, are also subdivided into profile, full-face images and images whose central head is full-face, and the flanking ones are profiles. It has been established that images involved in the creation of a syncretic winged character, as well as heraldic structure of compositions, point to the semantic connection of handicrafts with the mythologem of the world tree. It is suggested that a composition was constructed by Kulai people with the use of such form-building means as "blending" of two mirrored images into one, reduction, metonymy. The latter one - substitution of one image for another, giving it a new, deeper meaning - indicates semantic correspondence between images of men and birds in the mythological world view of creators of casts. Metonymical substitution of these characters for images of the bear in Late Kulai time show the development and rethinking of ancient mythological subject matter by the Taiga inhabitants. Preserving wings in compositions with the bear might mean not complete substitution of characters but supplementing subject matter with a new image and meaning. At the same time, a limited number of graphic portrayal of compositions with the bear can be explained by the specialized use of items with this character. Since the culture of primitive society has undifferentiated, integral nature based on mythological mindset, we suggest that the variety of heraldic compositions and instability of ornithomorphic images in repousse of Early Kulai people reflect the level of readiness of the mythologem they are based on. Being the plastic implementation of narrative motifs, they are likely to characterize the stage of formation of mythological subject matter. In Late Kulai time, particular motifs referring to the my-thologem of the world tree took the shape of a complex generalized character with wings. The popularity of the character with spread wings not only with Kulai people but also with Medieval population of Western Siberia shows stability of traditions and formation of an icono-graphic canon reconstructing significant and perhaps even the main mythological subject matter.

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