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

interest is the ornamental layout, which decorated the staircase tower of the Spassky Cathedral in Chernigov, one of the oldest structures in medieval Russia, the same age as the Kiev Sophia Cathedral (11th century). N.V. Kholostenko, who published these decorative displays, discovered after the removal of the late plaster, believes that such ornaments had a “special, symbolic meaning.” He notes that the particularly rich decoration of the staircase tower, distinguishing it from other parts of the cathedral, is due to the fact that it was the place of “the ritual entrance of the prince and his entourage to the choir.” (Table 10). In the second tier of the tower, there is a wide ornamental belt made up of alternating equal-pointed crosses and intricately drawn swastikas.

      Spassky Cathedral Tower in Chernihov

      This shape of the swastika, with the ends curving in the form of a meander, was also given to the metal buckle 1220—1260, found at the Tikhvin excavation site in Novgorod (Table 10). It should be noted that this unusual and rather complex form comes unchanged until the 1910s, when a Vologda peasant woman Ulyana Terebova, making an abusive spacer for her daughter’s wedding towel (Table 10), ornamented it with just such meander crosses. Bone combs of the 9—10th century found in the burial mounds of the Suzdal Opolye and in the the lower layers of Staraya Ladoga. The swastika sign marks a clay spindle from a 7—8 century settlement on the Tyasmin River, which belongs to the ancient Slavic tribe of Ulitsy (Table 9).

      Spindle

      Sinking further into the depths of the centuries, we find all the same meander and swastika motifs in the decor of the products of the Przeworsk and Zarubintsy cultures, which were widespread in the 3rd century BC. – 3rd century AD (according to B. A. Rybakov) in the same territories as the Proto-Slavic Trzhinets and Komarov cultures in the 15—12 century BC.

      Przeworsk ceramics

      This is well illustrated by the materials presented in the work of A. L. Mongait, which shows various vessels of the Przewor culture, decorated with meanders and intricately drawn swastikas, and in the article by E. A. Symonovich, which also gives samples of meander-swastika decor (Table 11).

      E. A. Symonovich in his work notes that the swastika, found on the vessels of the Bronze Age, “is widespread in purely Slavic patterns of the era of Kievan Rus, denoting the sign of the sun”.

      And, finally, if we turn to the Scythian period on the territory of the Middle Dnieper region, which proceeded the time of the appearance of the Przhevorsk and Zarubinets cultures, then we will meet the same picture here. On vessels from the Dnieper forest-steppe, one of the most common ornamental-symbolic motifs was a swastika, both of a simple form and of a very complex pattern, with many hooks-appendages at the ends. Moreover, it is extremely interesting that one of the vessels of the 6th century BC from the excavations near the village of Aksyutintsy, next to an equal-pointed cross and swastikas of various shapes, a cross, significantly larger than their size, was placed, which from the beginning of the 2nd millennium AD will become an “Orthodox” cross in Russia (Table 11).

      Thus, a continuous ornamental tradition can be traced, going from the cultures of the Bronze Age to Russian peasant embroidery and weaving of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But since it is in North Russian weaving that the ancient Andronovo complexes are found in the most complete form, which the Finno-Ugric peoples of this region do not have, we can assume another solution to the issue of the carriers of the Andronov ornamental tradition.

      It is possible that both the substratum population of the north of Eastern Europe before the arrival of the Slavs here, and the Slavs who came to these lands had similar sacral ornamental symbols, transmitted to them by their distant common ancestors. There was probably a certain awareness of this relationship.

      Otherwise, it is extremely difficult to explain the clear direction of the mobile Slavs precisely in Zavolochye, to the East of the European North, noted by V. V. Pimenov in his work “Vepsa”, where he writes, that: “for some not entirely clear reasons, the bulk of Russian immigrants either, like the Novgorod ushkuyniks, passed away, almost without lingering and almost without settling, the indigenous lands of the Vepsians, or else she bypassed them altogether, directing her way directly to Zavolochye”, those on the land of the legendary “chudi white-eyed”, about which we spoke a little earlier.

      It probably makes sense to agree with V. N. Danilenko, who expanded the zone of accommodation of Indo-Europeans in the 8—5 thousand BC from the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea up to the watershed of the rivers of the White and Caspian Seas and further north, and assume that the substrate population of the Vologda lands, before the arrival of the Slavs here, was overwhelmingly represented by the descendants of this ancient Indo-European massif. Thus, it will be possible to explain the preservation in the North Russian tradition of such forms, which are completely uncharacteristic of the Finno-Ugric ornamentation, or are extremely rare in it, but at the same time they are constantly present in weaving and embroidery of the late 19th – early 20th centuries of the eastern regions of the Vologda region, on the one hand, and in the monuments of various archaeological cultures of the southern Russian steppe and forest-steppe, on the other. Ornamental complexes, identical to the North Russian ones, typical for the North Caucasus and some regions of the Transcaucasia, they are quite common in the mosaic decoration of medieval temples, mausoleums, mazars of Central Asia and Iran, those common in those territories which modern science associates with the Aryan advances of the late 2nd – early 1st millennium BC.

      In the Bronze and Early Iron Age, the closest analogues of the Timber-Abashevo-Andronovo ornaments in the southeast of the European part of the country are found in the monuments of the North Caucasus of the second half of the 2nd – early 2nd millennium BC. These are, in particular, materials published by V. I. Markovin from excavations of the crypt of the 2nd millennium BC the village of Engikal in Ingushetia: plaques and pins with disc-shaped pommels, covered with punson swastika and meander-like images (Table 12). He notes that: “unfortunately, the North Caucasian ceramics of the Bronze Age has been poorly studied so far, almost no comparison has been made with the ceramics of the steppe cultures”, and at the same time: “… there is no doubt that it was the steppe tribes of the Lower Don that wedged themselves into the Kuban region”. Here we should once again recall the hypothesis of O.N. Trubachev that the Kuban people of the Sindi are a relic of the Indian tribes that remained in Eastern Europe after part of the Indo-Iranians (Aryans) left this territory. Among the materials published by R. M. Munchaev on the burials of the Lugovoy burial ground in the Assinsky gorge (Checheno-Ingushetia), a significant percentage of double-oval bronze plaques (it is interesting that the same form is characteristic of Slavic brooches of the 8th century), marked with a swastika, punched in the center of each oval. R. M. Munchaev notes that: “… they were always near the skull or chest.

      This allows us to consider them as forehead or breast plates”. Interestingly, burial grounds such as Lugovoy and Nesterovsky, also located in the Assinsky gorge, are characterized by the erection of burial mounds over burials. All this is very similar to the traditions of the Andronovites, as well as the obligatory presence in the burials of vessels and ornaments, and on the latter, as we can see, ornamental motifs were placed, more than traditional for the Andronovo monuments. Similar functions of amulets as double-oval plaques from the Lugovoy burial ground, plaques and pins from Engikal, were probably performed by the forehead corollas-diadems of the 14—13th century BC, found by B. V. Tekhov during excavations of the Tli burial ground in South Ossetia. These tiaras are decorated with geometric shapes – circles, triangles, rhombuses, and, as a rule, meander and swastika images (Table 12).