Indo-European ornamental complexes and their analogs in the cultures of Eurasia. S. V. Zharnikova

mythological schemes, and those ornamental forms that were common to the vast Slavic-Indo-Iranian region and were preserved in relict form until our days. V. V. Stasov, a well-known researcher of Russian culture, wrote about such relic ornamental forms: “In the ornament of Russian embroidery are precious and as yet untouched materials for studying different sides of ancient Russian nationality.” Indeed, for more than a century, Russian embroidery and abusive weaving have attracted the closest attention of researchers. At the end of the last century, a number of brilliant collections of works of these types of folk art were formed. The studies of V. V. Stasov, S. N. Shakhovskaya, V. Ya. Sidomon-Eristova and N. P. Shabelskaya laid the foundation for the systematization and classification of various types of Russian textile ornaments; they also made the first attempts to read complex “plot” compositions especially characteristic of the folk tradition of the Russian North.

      The sharp rise in interest in folk art in the 20th century brought to life a whole series of works devoted to the analysis of subject-symbolic language, technical features, and regional differences in Russian folk embroidery and weaving. However, most of the works focused on anthropomorphic and zoomorphic images, archaic three-part compositions, which include a stylized and transformed image of a female (more often) or male (less often) pre-Christian deity. It is this group of plots that has so far caused the greatest interest among researchers. The geometric motifs of the North Russian branded weaving, as a rule, accompanying the main detailed plot compositions, are somewhat different, although very often in the design of towels, belts, hem, sleeve and mantle shirts it is the geometric motifs that are the main and only than they are extremely important for researchers.

      I must say that, along with the consideration of complex plot schemes, serious attention was paid to the geometric layer, as the most archaic in Russian embroidery, in the well-known articles of A. K. Ambrose. In the fundamental monograph by G. S. Maslova, published in 1978, the problem of the development and transformation of geometric ornaments is widely considered from the standpoint of its historical and ethnographic parallels, but, unfortunately, do not go deeper than the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. B. A. Rybakov paid and pays exceptionally great attention to archaic geometrism in Russian ornamental creativity. And in his works of 60—70 and in studies on paganism of the ancient Slavs and Ancient Russia published in 1981 and 1987, the idea of the endless depths of folk memory that preserves and carries through the centuries in images of embroidery, weaving, painting, carving, toys, the oldest worldview patterns, leaving their rooted in the millennia. B. A. Rybakov believes that the origins of many ornamental motifs that survive in Russian art until the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century should be sought in the depths of the Eneolithic and even Paleolithic, i.e. at the dawn of human civilization. Of exceptional interest in this regard are the collections of museums of the Russian North, i.e. those places where the Slavs lived already in the first centuries of our era, long before the baptism of Russia. Remoteness from state centers, relatively peaceful existence (the Vologda region, especially in its eastern part, practically did not know wars), the abundance of forests and the protection of many settlements by swamps and impassability – all contributed to the preservation and preservation of patriarchal forms of life and economy, careful attitude to the faith of the fathers and grandfathers and, as a consequence of this, the preservation of ancient symbols coded in embroidery and weaving ornaments.

      Ornament Kostenki

      Mezin Ornament

      And so, one of the most ancient ornamental motifs of the peoples of Eurasia is a slanting cross, rhombus and meander, appearing for the first time in Eastern Europe (Kostenkovskaya and Mezinskaya cultures) on products from marl, bone and mammoth tusks already during the Upper Paleolithic (26—23 thousand years) ago).

      A. A. Formozov notes that already in the Middle Paleolithic (during Mousterian time) there is a big difference between the Mousterian monuments of the Russian Plain and the Caucasus, on the basis of which he considers it possible to talk about the formation of ethnocultural areas on the territory of the European part of the USSR in the Stone Age.

      In the Upper Paleolithic, the difference between the southwestern historical and cultural region and the neighboring areas of the Dnieper and Northern Black Sea regions is also noted, despite the fact that researchers emphasize the vast expanses from the upper reaches of the Dnieper basin, the entire Volga basin to the Ural Mountains, which have been studied poorly and, therefore, do conclusions here are not yet possible. One of the most important ethnocultural differentiators, along with the characteristic features of the flint and bone industry, the house-building system, zoo and anthropomorphic sculpture, even at that time, was ornament. So in the II cultural layer Kostenok 14 near Voronezh (abs. Age 26—28 thousand years ago) and in Vladimir Sungir (abs. Age 24—25 thousand years ago), dating from the early Upper Paleolithic, were found made in a certain stylized ornamented bone products and mammoth tusk. Researchers note: “their carved geometric and dimpled ornaments are preserved and developed in the subsequent heyday of the Late Paleolithic cultures of the Russian Plain.” Analyzing the ornaments of the last stages of the Kostenkov culture M. D. Gvozdover comes to the conclusion that: “the oblique cross is most often found from the elements of the ornament… Obviously, this ornament should be considered the most characteristic for the Kostenkov culture, especially since in other Paleolithic cultures the ranks from oblique crosses are almost unknown. “She further notes that the choice of ornament and its location on the subject is not due to technological reasons or material, since the same ornament was applied to a flat and convex surface, to a tusk, bone or marl, but to cultural tradition. Thus, already at this early stage in the history of human civilization, “the archaeological culture is characterized by both the elements of the ornament itself and the type of arrangement on the ornamental field and the grouping of elements.” The rows of oblique crosses that first appeared on the products of the Kostenkov culture did not disappear along with the cultural tradition that gave rise to them. We can trace these signs on the monuments of different, successive, archaeological cultures of Eurasia. They are found on Neolithic ceramics, on the products of Trypillian potters, on the vessels of the Afanasyevsky, Yamnaya, Srubnaya, and Kushetin-Komarov cultures.

      Neolithic pottery

      Tripolie ceramics

      Tripolie ceramics

      Pottery of Afanasyev culture

      Pit culture pottery

      Ceramics of the “carcass” culture

      As they obstructed the oblique cross on the bottoms of clay Slavic plates, they marked the sculptures indicating the path to the top of the sacred Sobutka Mountain near Wroclaw in Silesia, created no later than 5th century AD, they were placed on the ceramics of Kievan Rus, and until the end 19 century the North Russian peasants decorated the ends of the spinner’s claws with these rows of oblique crosses.

      It is difficult to find in the Russian North an instrument of peasant labor made of wood – whether it be a spinning wheel, sewing machine, flax, a wooden stand for a sunflower, on which a slanting cross or a number of such crosses as a single ornamental motif would not be cut or scratched anywhere oblique crosses are quite often found on the woven spacers of the North Russian peasant women.

      All this testifies to the fact that ornamental complexes