Plaque with three human figures
Place of storage. Florinskiy Museum of Siberian Archeology and Ethnography, Tomsk State University, Tomsk.
Material. Bronze.
Place of discovery. The river Vasyugan (left tributary of the river Ob, Western Siberia).
Context of discovery. No clear context of discovery. The object was submitted to the Florinskiy Museum of Siberian Archeology and Ethnography of Tomsk State University in 1958 as part of a series of discoveries dubbed as “Vasyugan Treasure”.
Dating. 7th c. AD.
Description
The plaque depicting three human figures was received by Florinskiy Museum of Siberian Archeology and Ethnography of Tomsk State University in 1958 as part of the set of 17 bronze artifacts discovered by accident on the river Vasyugan (a bowl, a torc, parts of a belt kit , anthropomorphic and zoomorphic castings). Academic literature dubbed the discoveries as "Vasyugan Treasure". There is no clear context of discovering the “treasure”. Perhaps all the objects come from a robbed grave, or, indeed, the collection might be a “treasure”, ie the objects were purposefully collected and buried together in a sacrifice to the gods.
The composition on the plaque comprises three human figures, all three-fingered.
The central figure has two human heads hanging over its shoulders. This curious detail has no analogy in West Siberian casting and evokes associations with “headhunters”. Heads could be regarded as trophies and symbolize luck in war. The importance of the central figure is clearly emphasized. The two characters on either side look virtually identical, while the central one, besides having two human heads over its shoulders, has its arms folded across its chest, unlike the other two with their arms on their waists. The facial features differ, too: unlike the other two allegedly “singing” figures, the central one has tightly pressed lips with two oblique lines above them for a mustache, the well-known attribute of military fame. It may be that the central character is a military leader, and the whole composition is showing the moment of a ritual dance intended to gain the martial spirit—a special, poetically aggressive state of mind. The human heads used in the dance were supposed to inspire faith in the tribal chief, who magically took power of the enemies he killed and beheaded. Folklore of West Siberians manifests a special attitude towards the human head and the skull, which are the center of life, the home to reincarnated “soul” and “life energy”. Archaeological surveys of fractional burials of that time, ie ritual burials of human heads only, prove the existence of such ideas in the early Middle Ages.
PUBLICATIONS
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Mogilnikov V. (1964) Vasyuganskiy klad [Vasyugan Treasure]. Sovetskaya archeology, no 2, pp. 227–231.
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Zaytseva Oh (1999) Ob osobom otnoshenii k chelovecheskoy golove v voinskikh ritualakh na primere Vasyuganskoy blyakhi [On the Special Attitude Towards the Human Head in Military Rites Through the Example of Vasyugan Plaque]. Trudy Mezhdunarodnoy konferentsii po pervobytnomu iskusstvu. - T. I [Proceedings of the International Conference on Prehistoric Art. - V. I], Kemerovo, pp. 204–206.
Author: Zaytseva O. V.