Full length articleImages of camels on a mammoth tusk from West Siberia
Introduction
The repertoire of Paleolithic art in Eurasia is versatile and has already been quite well studied. Among the typical zoomorphic images of this art are large representatives of mammoth fauna from the north of the continent. Recent studies, however, have provided new material from the eastern part of the region, allowing us to add another animal to the repertoire – a two-humped camel. For instance, one painted image of this animal has been found in Ignatievskaya (Yamazy-Tash) cave, another became widely known after its recent discovery during the cleaning of calcite deposits in Kapova (Shulgan-Tash) cave, both in the Urals (Shirokov and Petrin, 2013; Devlet et al., 2018a, Devlet et al., 2018b). Our paper introduces camel images from another unique artifact – a fragment of a mammoth tusk from the Tom River in West Siberia. It was accidentally discovered in 1988, but it has remained almost unknown to international scholars. There are several short publications and mentions in the Russian literature, but this find obviously deserves a new and deeper study. At this stage, the main purpose of this new study is to confirm the Late Pleistocene age of the animals carved on the tusk through a systematic analysis of all available data.
This article addresses outstanding questions about the tusk by presenting new research on: 1) the history of research on the tusk and clarification of its find location; 2) the radiocarbon date of the tusk and new documentation of the images on it, as carried out for the first time by the authors using 3D modeling and macro photography; 3) the identification of the figures and visual composition on the tusk based on the results of new documentation; 4) the application method and stylistic features of the images used to test their hypothesized Late Pleistocene age; 5) the geographical distribution of the most ancient images of two-humped camels and parts of their skeletons from the Late Pleistocene Epoch used to evaluate the overlapping of camel and human ecological niches; and 6) the new interpretation of the images based on composition, camel behavioral traits, and paleogeographic data.
Section snippets
The discovery and further study of the tusk
In June 1988, Tomsk State University (TSU) received some information about fragments of mammoth skeletons discovered while digging a car inspection pit in a previously constructed garage at the outskirts of Seversk in the Tomsk region. Archaeologists S.A. Terekhin and A.D. Gaman, together with A.N. Kondrashev, a history department student, went to the location to confirm the information. At the construction site they witnessed three unearthed fragments of tusks (one of a large diameter and the
Characteristics of the tusk and its age
Close examination of the artifact indicates that it is a fragment of a bigger tusk (Fig. 2, c). The length of its outer surface is 74 cm, the inner surface is 63 cm. The diameter of the thicker end is 9.4 cm. According to S.V. Leshchinskiy (consulted by MAES in 1996), who based his estimations on the size and signs of natural attrition at the tip of the tusk, the artifact is a frontal fragment of a 1.5 m long tusk which belonged to a 35–40-year-old male mammoth. The fragment was cut before it
Methods of documentation and new results
The engravings on the tusk from the Tom River have special features, which make them difficult to document: 1) they have very thin and shallow lines, making them barely visible and tedious to trace; 2) the engravings are on the surface of a round, long, curved and heavy object which does not allow all the imagery to be seen and recognized without rotating the tusk; 3) the poor condition of the tusk (cracked and crumbling on many parts of the surface) does not permit us to see a complete and
Camels
The study of the engravings from the 2D model of the tusk surface identified four images of two-humped camels. They are depicted in different colors and each given a number on the sketch (#1–4 in Fig. 4). All four animals were executed in the same style, using similar techniques and tools. The main stylistic feature of these images is that they combine the figures' outlines with a series of short transverse cuts on the inner side. In some places, the outline is missing and the short cuts
What does the composition on the tusk represent?
Similar images of camels facing each other are quite common in the art of different cultures of the Bronze Age, Early Iron Age and Medieval period in southern Siberia and Central Asia (Mukhareva, 2007: Fig. 4–7). Such frequency indicates that the composition conveys a memorable and important natural characteristic of camel behavior. In many cases, the composition combines two male rivals that are fighting or are about to fight (Fig. 8). Such behavior is seasonal by nature and occurs annually
Comparative analysis of the style
The most important stylistic feature of the engravings on the tusk from the Tom River is that the contours of the figures are made either by continuous lines combined with a series of short parallel cuts, or by parallel cuts only. In the context of Eurasian art history, such a way of outlining is typical for the Upper Paleolithic period in Europe. It is related to multiple types of animals and human-like representations at different sites and could be applied to different materials by different
Engravings on the tusk in paleogeographic context
The discovery of two-humped camel engravings on a mammoth tusk in western Siberia, together with the images of these animals among the paintings in the caves of the southern Urals, require an overall analysis in relation to the context of different life activities of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. It is obvious that the appearance of camel images is not accidental – it should be seen as a reflection of the regional specifics of Upper Paleolithic art conditioned by the characteristics of the
Conclusion
Overall, the aforementioned stylistic features of the images on the tusk, their composition and current condition, the engraving technique, paleogeographic context and the depth within the terrace of the Tom River where the tusk was discovered correspond to the carbon dating of the tusk. This evidence dates the images to the final stage of the Upper Paleolithic (even if we assume some time gap between the death of the mammoth and engraving of the tusk). Thus, the images on the tusk from the Tom
Declaration of Competing Interest
None.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to Evgeny Barsukov (Tomsk State University), for supporting the research on the mammoth tusk, and to Andrey Kondrashev (State Guard Service for Cultural Heritage Objects in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District – Yugra), for his very important assistance in our search for the place of this unique discovery. We wish to thank paleontologist Dmitry Malikov (V.S. Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy) and three reviewers, who read through the
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