TITLE:
The Engraved Pebble from Pavlo-Ochakovskaya Spit
AUTHORS:
Elena A. Mironova
KEYWORDS:
Engraved Pebble, Pavlo-Ochakovskaya Sand Spit, Zoomorphic Shape, Sacral Places, Eurasian Paleolithic Cult, Great Goddess, Interdisciplinary Approach, Culturological Study, Archaeological Data, DNA-Genealogy
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Anthropology,
Vol.11 No.4,
September
3,
2021
ABSTRACT: The status of the pebble artifacts found on the seashores
and banks of the lakes in the sacral places is being discussed intensively in
modern archaeology during recent years. Many of suchlike engraved stone
sculptures in a shape or with the images of a bear, a bird, an elk/deer, etc. were found in the Urals
and Siberia. All finds are connected with
the cult places of worship, namely, painted cliffs or petroglyphs. The shamans’
burials also were found nearby. This article presents a new find made by the
author in summer, 2020 on the Sea of Azov shore, on Pavlo-Ochakovskaya spit—the
sandy beach in the Gulf of Taganrog, Rostov-on-Don Region. The shape of this
pebble is of the canonized form of an
elk/deer head and it looks like the artifacts from: Kazachka-I, the basin of the river Yenisei; Zamostie-2; Podty
1 (Komi Republic) and Mikhailovka-Klyuch
(Osinoozersk culture), western Amur region archaeological sites. The
previous findings of the similar shape were found not only on the open spaces
but also in the archaeological layers. Archaeology still does not have a clear
answer to the question of the usage of this kind of artifact. A new find from the Sea of Azov shore has an image of a running deer, which is partially
painted and partially engraved. It has an incision marking the muzzle of a deer
and very thin lines crossing the deer’s body. With the help of comparative study and interdisciplinary approach in this
paper, we found out that similar
stone sculptures in the shape of an elk/deer head were the markers of the
migrated tribes since Paleolithic and can be attributed as the symbols of the Great Goddess—a divinity of mountains, stones and
fertility cult widely spread in Eurasia since the Upper Paleolithic.