Into the labyrinth/ Rock art on a very big scale

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tiompan T
tiompan Nov 12, 2007 19:38:24
Replying to tuesday

tuesday wrote:
We offered these but it seems the site isn't ready for Russia yet, so we set up a page with info and images collected by our friend Alex Budovsky on the mind blowing neolithic remains of the Solovetsky archipelago

check out:

http://web.mac.com/nicolastewart

Thanks Tuesday , They look beautiful and intriguing monuments . However I do have some misgivings . On what evidence was the dating "estimate " made ,? If so many were lost between 1927 and the present i.e (13 out of 14 , unless i misunderstood ) how many would have been lost between the Neolithic and 1927 or is it not likely that they might not be as old as some of the other monuments in the area .If they do prove to be that told it is certainly a major find in relation to the motif , I can't think of any Neolithic labyrinth .Anybody know any ?

T tuesday
tuesday Nov 12, 2007 21:15:50
Replying to tiompan

Check out fitz's reply above for other examples - apparently there are several others around the white sea coast.

it's a bit diffiicult to know all the details of dating as we're reliant on Alex's translations. The most recent and definitive work is Alexander Martynov’s book “Ancient trails of Solovetsky Islands”. Martynov is the resident beleagured Archaeo who has lived on the islands since 1978.

After Vinogadov, most of the research and analysis was done by a Professor Kuratov. The labyrinths are linked within a complex of funerary monuments - cairns, dolmens, graves and are associated with burial remains found over the last eighty years.

The damage was probably done during the establishment of the gulag - either institutional vandalism or for the purposes of plundering building materials. I think the reference to their removal is to do with the relatively small size and portabilty of individual stones rather than through natural weathering

F fitzcoraldo
fitzcoraldo Nov 13, 2007 10:05:46
Replying to tiompan

Hi G.
I share your misgivings, I guess it’s a bit like the Bullaun question, multi period sites yield multi-period artifacts.
I’ve had a wee trawl around the WWW and come up with these
The Natural History Museum has an image of the Big Zajatsky Labyrinth which it labels Neolithic
http://piclib.nhm.ac.uk/piclib/www/image.php?img=72188&frm=ser&search=neolithic
A couple of sites mention a carving on a Sardinian rock cut tomb (Domus de Janas), there is some dispute of the age of the carving as once again you have multi-period activity. There is a good account here
http://www.labyrinthos.net/luzzanas35.htm
There’s a nice account of Indian labyrinths here, once again there is debate over their antiquity
http://www.labyrinthos.net/indialabs.htm

There's a lot more if you are prepared to trawl through a fair old bit of new age cobblers, which I'm not.

fitz

T tuesday
tuesday Jan 2, 2008 20:35:51
Replying to tiompan

On further reading, it appears that the damage was in fact done and the stones removed as a result of the presence of the gulag.

Reading Anne Applebaum's terrifying history of the camps, it is apparent that the Solovetsky islands were the first, the biggest and one of the most enduring of the locations for forced labour. Many, many people worked and died here - adding a poignant dimension to the description of the labyrinths by archeologist Nikolai Vinogradov (himself an inmate) as representations of 'cities of the dead'. Much of the work involved digging, clearing, road making and building.