meander spiral and swastika, acquire greater diversity, through preserving the old archetype. Moreover, we know that precisely proceeding from these ornamental motifs experts identify all the different types of Andronovo cultures. Describing the specific character of the ornamental decoration of the pottery in question, Kiselev says “that it is most singular, and that the provenance of the different motifs is zonal and that the place of a motif in each zone is usually the same.” He also says that the intricately formed Andronovo ornamental patterns “in all likelihood were seen as conventionalized symbols and their specific meaning, their symbolical significance is stressed by their specific complexity”.
M. Khlobystina is still more specific “Evidently, there existed a kind of communal nucleus, a community bound by norms of patriarchal law, which in turn possessed definite graphic symbols for clan affiliation, which the historian regards as encoded in the intricate interweave of the geometrical motifs of carpet-design pottery decor). It may be presumed that the dominant element of such ornamental motives is a range of figures disposed on the vessel’s shoulders. Evidently, a study of their number and their combination, -; of Z-signs meanders, broken lines and their variations- may be definitive for elucidating the structure of each community.”
We share Khlobystina’s view of the sacrosanct tradition and the meaningful content of Andronovo decor, for it was not fortuitous for such decorated vessels to be deposited in graves, where they most likely discharged the function of a clan or tribal totem, serving as a kind of identify card on the dead person’s journey to his ancestors who by this token were to recognize him as a member of their clan or tribe. In this respect the ornamental pattern on Andronovo pottery likewise acted as a talisman on the journey into the hereafter.
Hence, we may once again state-a point that must be specially noted-that the carpel-design decor on Andronovo pottery was most likely a totem, a symbol of clan and ethnic affiliation for the person whose possessions were thus decorated.
This evidently continues throughout the Karasuk period between the 17th and 12th centuries B.C., when the Scyth-Siberian Animal Style developed and during the Tagar period between the 7th and 1st centuries B.C. when often encountered on the celebrated open-worked Minusinsk belt plaques, in addition to representations of animals, is an orgamental design characteristic of Andronovo pottery decor, more specifically a lattice of 5-symbols (Fig. 11). These clasps or buckles, common throughout the middle reaches of the Yenisei River during the 3rd-1st centuries B.C. are to be met with the Ordos and Inner Mongolia-apparently due to the migrations starting at the turn of the Bronze and the beginning of the Iron Age of the tribes populating the southern fringe of the West Siberian taiga to the more southern regions. Responsible was apparently the wetter climate witch drastically expanded swamps and caused the taiga to encroach upon forest-steppes and steppe-lands territories. Nonetheless, yet in the Tashtyk period, extending from the 1st century B.C. to the 5th century A.D., the tribes populating the Minusinsk depression were distinctly Europoid, which is borne out by the terra-cotta portrait mask recovered from some family burial vaults. Kiselev quotes a Chinese chronicler who noted that the “Kyrgiz”, who inhabited what is today Khakassia, had “red hair, rosy cheeks and blue eyes”. He adds that the 8th-century scribe Ibn Mukaffa had written of the Kyrgiz that they had “red hair and white skins”. The same is reported by a Tibetan source noting that the K’inc’a (the Kyrgiz) had blue eyes, red hair and “a disgusting, i.e., unlike the Tibetan, Mongoloid) appearance.
Further, among the items Kiselev recovered from the ruins of an edifice near Abakan are some fascinating bronze door handles of local workmanship, that represent the fantastic countenances of horned genii which “forcefully emphasize the non-Chinese features. At any rate they are even more Europoid than the most Europoid of contemporary Tashtyk funerary masks.” He adds: “The mask handles convey distinctly Europoid features particularly emphasized by the highbridged nose. We see a Europoid’s large features, of the type prevalent in Southern Siberia from oldest antiquity and virtually up to the start of the Christian era.”
We may thus state that the traditional ornamental pattern of meander, swastikas, and 5-symbols characteristic of Andronovo pottery decor continued to persist throughout Western Siberia and more specifically the Minusinsk depression up to the start of the first millennium A.D., with some motives reaching Ordos and Inner Mongolia.
It should be further noted that time wise the closest affinities with Andronovo decor are to be found in North Caucasian sites of the turn of the second and first millennia B.C., which period almost dovetails with that of the colonization by Andronovo tribes in the 13th century B.C. of Southern Siberia’s steppes and forest-steppes. Apposite instances are afforded by the artefacts that V.Markovin recovered from a burial vault by the village of Enghikal in Ingushetia that date back to the middle of the second millennium B.C. They include plaques and fibulae with disk-shaped finials, embellished with die-stamped swastikas and meanders (Fig, 57). He adds that “regrettably North Caucasian Bronze Age pottery has been but little studied and hardly any comparisons have been drawn between it and the pottery of the steppe cultures”; yet, “… there is no doubt that precisely the steppe tribes from the lower Don area infiltrated the Kuban basin”.
Among the artefacts R. Munchayev recovered from the Lugovoi cemetery in the Assinsk gorge in Checheno-Ingushetia, there is a high proportion of bronze plaques in the form of a double oval with die-stamped swastikas in the middle of each (Fig. 40). He adds that “… these items were always found near the skull or chest which allows to regard them as temple or pectoral plaques,“3 in other words, as protective totems. Note that both in the Nesterovo and Lugovoi cemeteries in the Assinsk gorge, mounds were now and again raised over burials. Munchayev believes that there were cases when the ancient tribes here also erected barrows.
All this is most reminiscent of Andronovo tradition-also indicated by the obligatory presence in burials of vessels and adornments, embellished with ornamental motives that are more than traditional of Andronovo artifacts.
In all likelihood analogous functions were discharged by the sheet bronze diadems embellished with an ornamental pattern identical with the decor of the double oval Lugovoi plaques, which B. Tekhov recovered from the TH graves in Northern Ossctia (Figs. 38 and 39). These diadems are decorated with circle”, triangles and lo/rn^es; m«l also an a rule with meander and swastika typo motives.
Tekhov says that similar diadems were recovered from a Styrfaz chamber-tomb in the Northern Caucasus, from the Armenian village of Geharot and from sites in Azerbaijan and Iran.
He has also indicated the characteristic meander and swastika motives on the Koban-type axes recovered from the same Tliburials.
Swastika-type motives complicated by many protruding lines are also to be observed in the decor of finds unearthed in a number of places in Azerbaijan as for instance, on a clay die and also on the walls of a temple and in the plaster work of an earth dwelling from the ancient village of Sary-Tepe, on the wall by a hearth (Fig. 29) and the pintaderas (Figs. 54—56) of the village of Babadervish, which date back to the 12th-8th centuries B.C.
Consequently, the archaeological finds made in the Northern Caucasus and partly in the Trans-Caucasus, in Armenia and Azerbaijan, provide us with specimens of the use of ancient sacred ornamental motives that are characteristic of Mezin site artefacts decor and of Tripolye-Cucuteni, Timber-Frame and, especially, Andronovo pottery. Moreover, in the Caucasus these motives most likely have the same sacred functions of talisman and possibly of tribal and clan totem as were characteristic of Andronovo and, likely, Tripolye cultures.
We encounter echoes of swastika motives in Scythian jewelry, more specifically in the decor of horse trappings recovered from the Northern Pontine area. A. Meliukova believes that the openwork swastika plaques, also to be encountered in Thracian hoards are of Scythian origin, and adds that they appeared in the Northern Pontine area in the late 6th century B.C. True, in Scythian art, all these forms have been markedly modified and transmuted (Fig. 47) to meet requirements of the conventionalized realistic trend known as the Scytho-Siberian Animal Style.
We