Petroglyphs of the Lower Amur and Ussuri
Sikachi-Alyan, Sheremetyevo, Kiya, Kalinovka, Mai
«…Petroglyphs here are scattered in the true labyrinth of basalt rocks and are often found suddenly, in the most unexpected way, in the most unexpected places. But for the same reason, the newly found carvings are just as easy to lose in the chaos of a wild stone.
Moreover, the search for petroglyphs, the systematic description of the images, is complicated not only by waiting for weeks, even months of Amur’s grace, to wait for the time when his water will start to fall and many of the stones with images, until then hidden under water, will gradually emerge from the cloudy waves of Amur…
And… even after that, after winter has passed and spring has come, there may be bitter disappointment. Where there was once a familiar stone with drawings, it will not be. It will be covered with sand, or it will be turned down by ice flow, or it will be covered with other rocks. … The cut-out grooves of the petroglyphs are often almost indistinguishable in character from the porous and bubbly surface of the basalt. The researcher is often in danger of mistaking artificial recessions for those resulting from the work of the elements, the weathering processes and the mechanical damage that occurred in the distant past. The petroglyphs themselves, due to their deep antiquity, in color and hue are indistinguishable from the natural surface of the stone…»
A. P. Okladnikov, 1971
Project «Three-dimensional modeling of archaeological environment and sacred landscapes of the Far East». The work is carried out with the financial support of RFFI, project 17-29-04389.
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