Павел Азбелев

Pazyryk Tattoos as an Artistic Testimony of Ancient Wars and Marriages.
Azbelev, Pavel Petrovich (The State Hermitage Museum, Educational Department)

Abstract. The Pazyryk culture of the Altai mountains (second half of the 1st millennium ВСЕ) is famous for its well-preserved organic materials which survived due to the permafrost beneath the barrows. Of all the extant objects that come from five burials the oldest tattoos in Animal style, found on seven human mummies, attract special attention. Pioneering is the author’s approach to the finds based on the principles of mapping main tattoos on the body with its interpretation: the development of the principles is traced according to territorial and chronological spreading of iconographic analogues. Finds of this kind allow us to propose certain preliminary systematization: it is possible to distinguish sustainable sets of images different for males and females.
Meaning of a tattoo correlates to the role which a body part that bears it played in a person’s life. Large images of predators placed closer to the heart make us recall that it is heart that is often considered to be the seat of courage, rage, and other characteristics by many folks associated with large predators. Ungulates shown in agony as defeated animals or victims are placed on forearms — it is with their hands that people fight, hunt, and make sacrifices. On legs, which are to be fast and strong, there are running herbivore animals chosen from among the most fast and hardy. All this is common for Animal style as a magic mascot that was believed to influence the carrier of a certain image.
An image of a hoofed griffin is quite a special phenomenon originating from Northern China and Mongolia. The Pazyryk images of these griffins are imitative; the Altai nomads should have associated the image of this monster with their neighbours endowing it with the idea of victim, and not only they knew the “owners” of the image, but also feuded and fought with them.
Analogies to the composition with predators surrounding tortured ungulates are found to the West of the Altai mountains. Communicative vector which is presented here corresponds with the Western analogies to the finds and imported items that come from the Fifth Pazyryk barrow. Perhaps, the woman buried there, born in Eastern Kazakhstan or in South-West of Siberia, could have arrived to the Altai via marriage as a result of strengthening ties between the Pazyryk culture and the West, to the detriment of connections with South-Eastern neighbours. It is possible that the Pazyryk tattoos in Animal style depict the system of the Pazyryk culture’s contacts and their dynamics in the 4th–3rd centuries ВСЕ.

Попытки соотнести пазырыкскую культуру с юэчжами китайских источников, предпринимавшиеся с середины прошлого века, полностью неосновательны. Подробная проверка показывает, что вещественные аргументы, привлекавшиеся в доказательство и в развитие этой теории, либо анахроничны, либо отражают настолько широкие связи, что частные сопоставления отдельных культур и памятников теряют смысл. В то же время имеются причины предполагать, что носители пазырыкской культуры входили в число динлинов. Их отдалённые потомки в VI в. составили основную массу второстепенных племён Первого тюркского каганата, чем и объясняются черты сходства между пазырыкской и древнетюркскими культурами.
P.P. Azbelev. Pazyryk Heritage and the Yuezhi Problem.
Attempts to correlate the Yuezhi of Chinese sources with the Pazyryk culture that have been made since the middle of last century are completely groundless. Detailed examination shows that the material evidences which were used as a proof of this theory and its further development are either anachronistic or reflect connections so broad that separate comparison of single cultures and monuments is meaningless. At the same time, there are reasons to suppose that those who belonged to the Pazyryk culture were a part of the Dingling. In the 6th century their distant descendants accounted for the bulk of the subordinate tribes of ethno-political hierarchy of the First Turkic Khaganate, which explains some similarities between Pazyryk and Old Turkic cultures.

Логика эволюционной схемы происхождения и ранней истории стремян, выработанной в 1970-х гг., должна быть пересмотрена. На раннем этапе стремена, сначала в виде односторонних подсадочных подножек, а затем и двусторонние, не повлияли на развитие военного дела и были всего лишь аристократическим аксессуаром, чуждым кочевнической традиции. Превращение стремян во всеобщий всаднический стандарт произошло не в итоге постепенного развития и распространения северокитайских и корейских прототипов, а в результате сложения своеобразных, отличающихся от обычного кочевничества, условий, в которых племя ашина оказалось после 460 г., с началом алтайского периода своей истории.

Azbelev P.P. Once more about the early stirrups.
The logic of the evolutionary scheme of stirrups’ origin and early history, which was worked out in the early 1970es, should be revised. At the earliest stage of their existence the stirrups, which first came into being in the form of one-sided foot-supports, had nothing to do with the development of warfare. Originally they were just an accessory for aristocracy, an accessory that was alien to nomadic tradition. The stirrups’ transformation to become a universal equestrian standard did not come as a result of gradual evolution and spreading of the northern Chinese and Korean prototypes, but appears rather to be conditioned by a complex of peculiar conditions in which the ashina tribe found themselves after 460 AD, when the Altai period of their history had started.

http://www.kronk.spb.ru/library/azbelev-pp-2012b.htm
В статье рассмотрены развитие взглядов на хронологию таштыкской культуры, а также приёмы датирования, применённые разными исследователями. В советское время одни исследователи подчиняли решение этих проблем официальной псевдомарксистской идеологии, другие стремились этого избежать. Из-за этого возникла путаница в датах и интерпретациях, постепенно преодолеваемая в последние десятилетия.

P.P. Azbelev
Tashtyk Chronology: the Current State of the Problem.
The article considers the development of views on the chronology of Tashtyk culture, as well as dating techniques applied by different researchers. In Soviet times, some researchers subordinated the solution of these problems to the pseudo-Marxist official ideology, others sought to avoid it. Because of this, there was confusion concerning chronology and interpretations, but the situation has been improving over the last decades.

P.P. Azbelev.
Cronologia culturii Tashtyk: starea cercetării.
Acest articol abordează evoluţia opiniilor cu privire la cronologia culturii Tashtyk şi metode de datare aplicate de către diferiţi cercetători. În vremurile sovietice, unii cercetători au subordonat soluţionarea acestor probleme ideologiei oficiale pseudomarxiste, alţii au încercat să evite acest lucru. De aceea, a apărut o confuzie cu privire la date şi interpretări, care este treptat depăşită în decursul ultimului deceniu.