Miraculously preserved. How the paleo -art in the open air survival survives

The very first artists left their drawings where it is almost impossible for an ordinary tourist - on hard -to -reach rocks and in distant caves. However, sometimes urban residents are available to the expositions of cave painting. Olga Orlova talks about this with the head of the Center for Paleoistry of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Elena Levanova in the program "Hamburg account" on the OTR.

- Usually, experts who are engaged in fine art do not go to hard -to -reach areas, but your objects of study are in the most remote corners of our country. Do we have a lot of cave painting?

- It all starts with the White Sea and Onega Petroglyphs in Karelia and ends on Chukotka. The huge range of rock art is Mountain Altai, Khakassia and the Krasnoyarsk Territory (that is, South Siberia), Transbaikalia, there are many monuments in the Far East. And these regions are not as good as central Russia. The caves are also quite difficult. Although the most famous cave in our country Shulgan-Tash, or Kapova, is now being built, there all the infrastructure is tied to its museumification, everyone is preparing for UNESCO’s decision on this cave.

We are engaged in remote regions - the Khabarovsk Territory and Chukotka, that is, those monuments that are located on the eastern outskirts of our country.

- How do you get there? After all, ordinary tourists cannot get there.

- The Khabarovsk Territory is available to ordinary tourists. There is an hour of riding from Khabarovsk, there is a wonderful monument to Sikachi Alyan, which is our expedition. He is on the preliminary list of UNESCO. These are giant boulders with images on the banks of the Amur River. Tourism is developed there, and it is more likely to harm than for the good, because the monument is not protected. But there are monuments in hard -to -reach regions, for example, in Chukotka. Probably, the expedition of our institute, which in the 2000s worked at Chukotka, was one of the most labor-cost and generally complex expeditions to study cave art in the country. It was necessary to get to Chukotka, then the tundra, then the field camp in extreme conditions. There is very little time to work, because you have either snow, or rain, or a crazy number of mosquitoes. And the work on the study of this monument in the 2000s was huge. It was opened in the 20th century by geologists, then described by archaeologist Nikolai Dikov.

And now we have to do an even greater job. Because we are going with a huge amount of equipment that is necessary in order to fully document the monument at the modern level, to make its virtual copy.

-When you go to the object, you still have the task of describing and studying. In such cases, it is possible to establish dating and at least understand what ancient people painted this, what kind of peoples, civilizations were?

- In the study of rock art, this is the most painful topic. Our monuments with which I myself have been studied since the 1930s. And Petroglyphone as a discipline has passed several stages. At first we talked about what we compare with some archaeological materials the style of images. This is called comparative dating when we are trying to tie an object to those crops about which we know something according to archeology.

- That is, where you have already determined the dating and described this culture, do you understand who we are talking about?

- Most often they are not directly related. Here you have huge rocks covered with drawings. There is an archaeological monument nearby. There is no direct connection between them. And now a lot is being done in order to understand how to live with it further, how to develop the direction of dating Petroglyphs (for example, our Novosibirsk and Moscow Colleagues).

Great luck, when we, for example, have some kind of dumped plane enters the cultural layer. We can take materials for dating in the layer, and the overlap with a layer of these drawings (Petroglyphs) will then give their absolute dating. But this very rarely happens. Most often, we can only determine something by the image style. Trexologists also work with Petroglyphs. These are experts who look at traces left by tools. And they can determine with a certain degree of confidence that a stone gun was used here, and iron on another monument. But for monuments of Chukotka this is not enough, because there is rare iron there and it appears very late. That is, we cannot, unfortunately, even answer in which millennium these petroglyphs were made.

- But if we talk about the plots: when we see images of animals and we know about when these animals lived in this territory and when they were gone, this is not the key to dating?

- Unfortunately, we do not have so many images of extracted animals. In the cave art of the Southern Urals - undoubtedly. They are also found in Altai. At least, it is believed that there are images of mammoths. Archaeologists are delighted, because “cheers, we found mammoths, this is definitely the upper paleolitis” (mammoths then die out). For example, we work with one Mongol monument and also try to prove that we have a woolly rhino there, and maybe even a mammoth. But these are isolated cases. There is also a Minusinsk basin in Khakassia - there are also many images that most likely belong to the Stone Age. But experts argue: what is this stone age? Is this the upper paleolitis or already neolite? These are completely different millennia - accurate reference, we cannot give accurate dating.

- That is, animals also do not give dating exactly?

- These can be animals that have changed, for example, the habitat. But when they exactly did it, we approximately understand. Well, for example, no later than the 3rd millennium BC. e. But in fact, it can be the IV - V millennium BC. e. There are very interesting monuments (again southern Siberia, Altai), where people came to generations, updated these drawings, added something. And there are images - like cultural layers, as in stratigraphy a sequence of strata - images consistently overlap each other. And then we see that we have ethnographically khakas, below we have the Middle Ages, and under them the cultures of the early Iron Age, bronze. And, perhaps, under them-I will exaggerate all the same-but under them the very stone age, which is the most ancient, but which is dated to a very large interval. And we can not answer exactly who the authors of these drawings were, because it is most likely a population that migrated further. We can trace the waves of migrations by drawings left on the rocks.

-In addition to the images of animals, there are still some plots that could tell about the worldview of these people, about how they saw the world, maybe about their mythology?

- In general, in every era there are its own plots, of course. Animals, it is animals - these are most likely the most ancient images, because in the Paleolithic images of people are rare. Later, hunting scenes, mythological scenes appear. My favorite example is the larvae - images that are the hallmark of the Far East, but are also found in other regions. We have a lot of different types of larvae in Siberia .. These are stylized images of human faces, possibly shamanic masks. It is possible that these are images of the spirits of the ancestors. Here you can guess for a very long time. In fact, in ceramics, we also have such larvae, very beautiful. This is primarily famous for the Far Eastern ceramics. They are oval, come with amazing hats, some kind of sunlight or flames.

It is impossible to clearly say what the guise is. But this is an image that is found all over the world, in all ancient art, not only in a cave. From Oceania and South America, through our entire Far East, this motive is universal. Like the motive of the hand, for example, in cave art, primarily in murals. Human imprint: "I was here."

- Is it like a signature?

- It's hard to say, but this is generally one of the most ancient motives, which is more than 40 thousand years old. Sulawesi, Caves of Coske and the Show in France - the oldest cave drawings in the world are positive and negative imprints of the palm.

- You give examples from those regions of our country where strong temperature changes, moisture, snow, ice, wind, etc. are located in natural weather conditions. How are they even preserved?

- Miracle. A lot of monuments are destroyed. Unfortunately, we can’t do anything or limited in methods and means. There are restorers of rock art, for example, in the beautiful Museum-Reserve "Tomsk Pisanya". There is a rock that periodically goes under water. We had a seminar for students, when we brought them to the Tomsk Scripture to tell about cave art, and the water rose, and we did not get to the monument. There are many factors that destroy this monument. We need a long process to test technologies and know how not to harm if you start saving.

- In order for these monuments to become available to the scientific community or that people see them, it is important to copy them. What methods of copying exist for such monuments that are, again, in a natural environment, when you cannot come, knock them down from a cliff, take them to the institute?

- A good question. But here it seems to me, it seems to me to deepen a little in history, because at the beginning of the 20th century beautiful ramps appeared, that is, papier-mash technology made on paper, relatively speaking. For example, the baton Alexander Vasilievich Adrianov. There was such a researcher of Siberian Petroglyphs, an archaeologist, a wonderful person who left us a huge collection, just an incredible archive for the cave art of Siberia.

Just part of his rampages are represented by images that have already been lost. It is important how exactly he retained all this - not just sketched, but copied. After all, the artist, like anyone, sees everything in his own way, unfortunately.

We still have wonderful copies of Alexei Pavlovich Skladnikov. This archaeologist opened a crazy number of monuments of cave art and generally archaeological monuments. And so in 1935 he made a baton on our Sikachi-Alyan in the Khabarovsk Territory even on newspapers, because he did not have ordinary paper. His expedition was very bad with finances. And the Pioneer Pravda of 1935 is the baton of our larvae, it is itself a unique, museum exhibit. They are stored in Kunstkamer.

Now there are a lot of copying technologies. One of them is facsimile copies made from silicone impressions. A negative imprint is made, gypsum, plastic, and other mother -in -law are poured into it - and they get a positive imprint. An example from the expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Ekaterina Georgievna Davelite, one of the most famous Moscow researchers of cave art. At one time, she did a huge work on the study of the Far East and Chukotka, founded our center of Paleoism. And one of the tasks facing its expedition was the manufacture of such facsimile copies that could be exhibited in museums.

We are talking about copies of the Pegmel Chukchi Petroglyphs, which no one has almost seen. And it is not known when it will be possible to get there with normal logistics. Now it is a helicopter and all -terrain vehicles. That is, logistics is not at all adapted for tourism. In the 2000s, copies were made in her expeditions, and the largest is at our institute, it is 2.5 m, a huge panel with images.

- That is, it is in the original size?

- The original size, of course. Toning such castings from photographs is already made by an artist. There are even lichens. From the photograph, everything that is on this plane is completely reproduced. And trasologists, that is, researchers who study knocking out under a microscope, with such castings can work as with the source material. This is a high-precision copy, not just a museum exhibit or art object. There were anecdotal situations, there was a negative reaction of visitors at our exhibition: "Why did you cut these stones out of the cliff?"

- That is, people thought it was all the present?

- Certainly. Until you pick up, you will not understand that they are light, plastic. The most interesting motifs were presented, for example, anthropomorphic images - “Chukchi fly agents”. See, they have such hats, knocking out with a past? It is often said that these are people who accept fly agaric to enter a trance. The adoption of fly agaric at the Chukchi is described by ethnographers, as a result of this, people saw the speakers and walking fly agaric. Perhaps we are dealing with such characters here. They have such mushroom caps.

On the other hand, perhaps these are just female characters who have a high hairstyle. They are known to ethnographers who studied North American Aleuts and other peoples. The Chukchi is not described by this, but maybe it really took place.

- And not aliens?

- Not aliens, absolutely for sure. There are no cosmic objects, everything is not trivial, but basically these are the hunting scenes, the scenes are commercial. That is, the Chukchi or, perhaps, other ethnic groups that hunt for the northern deer from Kayakov. There are scenes of hunting for naval animals, for example, for a whale, which is interesting, because the pegmel is located far from the sea coast. Well, in fact, this is a wonderful example for classes on copying Petroglyphs. We have a large collection, we sometimes exhibit it. But still, this is not enough, because Pegmel himself is an extensive accumulation of planes with images, there are more than 350 there. This is a huge monument. Now we are just moving to digital copying methods.

- Yes, since we live in the digital era, new digital methods are used in archeology very widely. How do you use them?

- The team of our institute, together with the Khabarovsk archaeologists and with the RSSDA laboratory (this is a large laboratory that is just engaged in digital methods) in the Khabarovsk Territory, as a result, a huge project has been implemented.

- digitizing Petroglyphs?

- Not only, we need a landscape context. That is, for example, you see on the map that the monument is a river bank with a huge number of boulders. And they have to look for them every year. In the Far East, we have problematic monuments, probably, one of the most difficult in Russia and in the world. For example, Sikachi Alyan, who is just in the preliminary list of UNESCO, is not guarded, not museum in-nothing. And every year on the Amur ice drift: ice floes turn over. It seems that everyone saw how this year in Khabarovsk, the ice floes demolished the embankment - there was such a very popular video. Every time you come to the monument - there is a new picture. That is, of course, those images that are far from the shore remain available, they are actually not so much subject to movement, do not suffer from this. But those in the coastal line ... At the first paragraph of Sikachi Alyan, even several boulders were eventually moved because they were at risk. Plus, they go under alluvia - this is sand with clay. They slowly sink, and these boulders eat these boulders. That is, we do not even know how many boulders with Petroglyphs can be at the bottom of the Amur.

It is certainly necessary to move them, to museumify the object, but there are a lot of barriers, moreover, this is a very expensive process. We have a huge number of boulders with drawings on the monument. Now our task is to determine the exact coordinates of each boulder, so that we can then come with the navigator and find every stone. Plus, we carry out monitoring every year to know how exactly they turn over, because, according to various sources, the numbers are simply crazy - tens of meters.

You also need to get maps of rock surfaces. This is such a large cliff 70 with something meters. On it, the images groups that were still sketched at the Okladnikov, we still do not find some of them, and our Russian pioneers saw them back in the 19th century. And Okladnikov was looking for what they sketched in 1894. That is, we cannot even find what was described in the 19th century.

Here, it would seem, nothing moves, but the surfaces are overgrown with lichens, collapses, so we still constantly lose something. Again, our task is to make each drawing precisely position on the map. Well, in the future, we could monitor his condition, track lichens, some traces of vandalism. On our website “Petroglyphs of the Lower Amur and Ussuri” all these cards are available, you can bring any image closer and consider in detail. This is a site on which digitized monuments of Sheremetyevo, Sikachi-Alyan and Kiya are completely represented. These are three large groups of monuments of rock art in the Khabarovsk Territory. And, what is important when you come to the monument just to look at Petroglyphs during the day, you will not see many images not because they are under lichens, but because the light is wrong or you simply do not understand where to look. And when you open the model, you can change the light as you like, remove the photo texture. Вы эти изображения действительно увидите, хотя нетренированный глаз человека, который не видел до этого наскальное искусство, просто не поймет, на что тут смотреть. Можно посмотреть на цифровую копию одного из самых известных валунов Сикачи-Аляна с изображением лося. У нас более 100 моделей доступны, есть каталог, в котором вы можете на любую модель посмотреть, покрутить как угодно, поменять освещение. И, понимаете, это же одно из самых известных изображений вообще в истории Хабаровского края. Вы откройте любой буклет про Хабаровский край — и увидите этого лося. Он потрясающий, шикарный, такое скелетное изображение.

Есть версия, что это изображение умершего животного, ведь эти скелетные изображения могут быть связаны с какой-то охотничьей магией — охотники призывают души вернуться в тело животного. Это одно из самых, наверное, интересных и узнаваемых изображений в дальневосточной традиции наскального искусства.

Это действительно важная технология, которая открывает нам наскальное искусство, которое безумно красивое и безумно интересное, но мало кто о нем знает даже в самих республиках, в самих регионах, где всё это находится. К сожалению, именно эта часть археологии как-то проходит мимо широкой аудитории.

— Насколько тяжело доставлять оборудование? Какое оно должно быть? Вы работаете с центром Юрия Свойского?

— Да, мы работаем с Юрием Свойским и Екатериной Романенко — это лаборатория RSSDA. Это геодезическое оборудование, коптер для аэрофотосъемки, очень много оборудования для фотограмметрической съемки: вспышки, фотоаппараты, список огромный. Лететь на Чукотку дорого не просто потому, что это далеко, а потому, что у нас очень дорогой багаж. В небольшие чукотские города летают маленькие самолеты. И, кроме всего прочего, это огромные трудозатраты. Там очень большая скорость ветра, уже начинается полярная ночь, может быть вьюга, пурга — что угодно.

Для того чтобы сделать сайт «Петроглифы Нижнего Амура и Уссури», потребовались усилия большой команды, больше 10 человек, и три года постоянной работы. Это не только экспедиции. Мы в экспедициях проводим 2–3 недели в год. Все остальное время уходит на камеральную обработку материалов. У нас очень много направлений экспедиций, а времени меньше, чем направлений, к сожалению.

Полностью запись программы можно посмотреть здесь:
otr-online.ru/programmy/gamburgskii-schet/anons-kak-vyzhivaet-paleoiskusstvo-pod-otkrytym-nebom-zapolyarya-52117.html