Place of storage. Seversk Museum, town of Seversk, Tomsk Oblast. Material. Bronze. Place of discovery. Cherdashny Log-III grave field (Western Siberia, left bank of the river Tom) Context of discovery. The object was discovered during the excavation of Cherdashny Log-III grave field under the supervision of Andrey Gaman (Seversk Archaeology Inspection Board) in 1994. Dating. 6th–7th cc. AD.
The bronze plaque was discovered during the excavation of Cherdachny Log-III grave field, in tumulus No. 12. The grave stood out sharply due to the abundant and diverse funerary gifts—that’s why it was described as “luxury”. The grave and the burial mound revealed iron blacksmith tongs and hammer, a plowshare, a knife, arrowheads, a sword, parts of body armor, a quiver hook, a fragment of a stirrup broken centuries ago, a horse bit, attachable belt plaques, remains of a birch bark quiver, and bronze bracelets. All of this points to the special social status of the buried person. We can only guess his occupation while alive: he could be a skilful blacksmith, a valiant military leader or a powerful shaman. Neither can we know for sure what part of clothes the plaque with a mythological plot used to be attached to, but analogies and its location in the grave allow us to suggest it was used as a pectoral ornament. It is also not impossible that the plaque had not been worn while alive and was only placed into the grave as a specific sacral object.
The plaque depicts a complex-plot composition which includes at least five distinctly identifiable characters. The central figure represents a seated moustachioed man in a peaked helmet and a plaque belt with a sword attached to it. All these objects—the sword, the plaque belt and the helmet—emphasize the military status of the character. Above the seated man, there is a raptor with stretched wings, most probably an eagle. Disproportionate clawed feet are resting on the man’s shoulders. Stylistic analogies make it possible to see a bear’s paws instead of a bird’s feet. Syncretic characters combining the features of a bear and a raptor are quite widespread in West Siberian casting of that time. The composition is completed by a less easily recognizable character of a two-headed serpent or pangolin. It is crooked so that both its heads prop the raptor’s wings. On the left and on the right of the central figure, we can see two anthropomorphic masks which probably impersonate the Moon and the Sun, respectively. The whole complex composition is a model of the three-membered universe. The raptor with stretched wings symbolizes the Upper World. The man, the soldier, the hero—denotes the Middle World, and the two-headed serpent represents the Lower World.
PUBLICATIONS
Mets F., Pletneva L. (2014) O bronzovoy blyakhe iz mogilnika Cherdashny Log-III [On the Bronze Plaque from Cherdashny Log-III Grave Field]. Tomskiy zhurnal lingvisticheskikh i antropologicheskikh issledovaniy, no 2 (4), pp. 59–71.
Pletneva L., Gaman A. (2007) Elitnoye pogrebeniye iz kurgana № 12 mogilnika Cherdashny Log III [The Luxury Grave from Tumulus No.12 of Cherdashny Log-III Grave Field]. Teoriya i praktika arkheologicheskikh issledovaniy, iss. 3, Barnaul: Altai State University, pp. 56–62.
