Animal Style of Ancient Nomads

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.

In the spring of 1972 as a result of construction work in the Pîrjolteni village (Călărași district, Republic of Moldova) was occasionally discovered a cremation with a various grave goods represented by the ceramic items, elements of horse harness and weapons. This burial, as well as a number of other burials that form the eponymous (Pîrjolteni-Dănceni) horizon is differently interpretated, both in ethnocultural and chronological way. Some researchers consider it a link between the Thracian Hallstatt and the classical Getian culture, i.e. a burial of early Getian culture. Others scholars see in that complex the reflection of Scythian-Thracian syncretism without a pronounced dominant and note that ethnocultural attribution is impossible in this case. This largely characterizes not the burial itself, but the problem situation where the value judgments of the researchers collide. For example, it is described from the perspective of “continuity” or “cultural diversity”, how often the space between the Dniester and Prut is presented. Nevertheless, the Pîrjolteni burial is a unique funeral complex, which obviously belonged to a warrior and, judging by the inventory, mounted warrior. Besides that, the deceased was focused on nomadic traditions in his equipment. And the analogies to weapons and horse harness lie far to the east and reflect evolutionary processes covering almost all steppe regions of Eurasia. While there are no special premises for clarifying the chronological position of the burial within the framework of the late Middle Scythian period, however, the date can be limited to the 1st quarter of the 5th century BC basing on the design of the sword. And the border between the initial stage of the Middle Scythian period and its final, apparently, lies at the turn of the 6th-5th centuries BC. Despite the over-originality of the complex, the presence of a Scythian sword and animal style objects allows us to link Pîrjolteni burial with the general processes associated with the evolution of military equipment of Carpathian-Danube region.