Deer Stone from Mezhelik (Eastern Altai)

This article gives a description and comprehensive interpretation of a new deer stone discovered by the author at the Mezhelik site near the village of Ulagan in the Eastern Russian Altai (Ulagan District of the Altai Republic). This statuary monument was reused as a stone sculpture in the Early Middle Ages and was set up near a Turkic memorial enclosure. It shows a necklace of pecked holes, and images of a boar and curled feline predator (?) in the Arzhan-Mayemir style, which makes it possible to preliminarily date the Mezhelik deer stone to the 8th–6th centuries BC. Juxtaposition of a predator and herbivore was typical of the scenes of torment in the Scythian Siberian art, for the concepts of sacrifice and fertility, and for the cycles of death and rebirth. Generally, according to scholars’ classification, the deer stone belongs to the so-called Sayan-Altai type of monuments which bear realistic depictions of animals and were widespread primarily in the Sayan-Altai and Western Mongolia. The secondary use of deer stones by the Turkic-speaking population of the Altai in the second half of the first millennium AD as walls or balbals of memorial enclosures and, in particular, as stone sculptures, was very common. There are numerous other examples of this practice. This tradition was particularly typical of the Early Turkic period (6th – first half of the 7th centuries) and might have emphasized the genetic continuity of statuary monuments from different historical periods. These representations were based on the idea of reproducing a male warrior with a belt, weaponry, and other attributes.