Archaeological research in Altai

In July-August of this year the reseachers of the Institute of Archaeology named after A.Kh. Khalikov  of Tatarstan Academy of Sciences continued fieldwalking reconnaissance on the territory of the Altai Republic (the head of the detachment is A.U. Urbushev, a junior researcher at the Museum of Archaeology of the Republic of Tatarstan). Scientific research was carried out within the framework of the State Program of the Republic of Tatarstan “Preservation of the national identity of Tatar people (2020-2024)”, p. 1.17. Study of the formation of the Volga and Altai Turkic-Tatars in the Middle Ages: the origins of the steppe civilization of Eurasia.

During an archaeological expedition in the valley of the river Karakol in the Ongudai district of the Altai Republic new rock carvings were discovered on the Tyn-Shak monument. 16 figurative images made in the engraving technique are fixed on two planes of this location. One rock plane shows a hunting scene, which is one of the most common and popular for the Turkic period in the VI-IX centuries AD. In addition to the presented drawing, a detailed image of the face of one of the hunters is interesting for scientific research, which is extremely rare for rock art of this time, and a pair of human figures, one of which has a three-horned headdress, which also provides additional information for subsequent analytical work.

The location of Kara-Tash with images of many zoomorphic figures (goats, deer and indeterminate creatures), which mainly belong to the Bronze Age, has been discovered in the Kosh-Agach district. The state of preservation of many planes is unsatisfactory due to the active influence of the anthropogenic factor in the form of various modern inscriptions and drawings on top of ancient images.

The rock carvings found as a result of exploration work in May and in July-August of this year supplement the case of Altai pictorial monuments and thereby expand our understanding of various cultural and historical processes on the territory of Altai during the Bronze and the Early Middle Ages.