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The publication presents materials of the funeral necropolis Kyrykungir (East Kazakhstan), in which two sets of astragals with traces of coloring pigments were discovered. The design of the burials accompanying the inventory and the general archaeological context allows dating these objects from the 12th to 13th centuries BC. Data from archaeozoological analysis and SEM-EDX analysis of the painted surface of objects (alchiks) are present in the paper. The species composition of animals has been established, demonstrating a combination of astragals of both domestic and wild species. A diverse chemical composition of paints with which objects were covered, as well as cases of renewal of staining, was revealed. In the initial version, individual astragals could belong to population with different traditions of making paints, possibly from different regions. The results allow us to offer a different point of view on the phenomenon of the presence of alchiks in archaeological cultures. The range of interpretations of astragals (alchiks) finds implies not only understanding them as elements of game traditions, but also designating their complex social and cultural role in the funeral rites of the population of Eurasia in the Bronze Age.

In the focus of the proposed article, the tattoo is considered as an ancient form of body modification in the Stone Age which arouses interest, first of all, in the technological features of the process. The article presents the results of a study of stone tools with traces of paints, preliminarily identified as tools for tattooing. The traces of paint were identified during microscopic analysis and subsequent study of the pigment spectrum using SEM-EDX. A morphometric study of stone tools from the cultural layer no. 7 of the Ushki V site (Kamchatka Peninsula), dated about 13,000-12,000 years BP, made it possible to suggest their use in working with leather and to reconstruct the types of symbolic behaviour of the ancient population. An important feature of the studied tools is the use of not only two functional types of tools (a cutting tool and a borer) but also their morphological difference, and may be, semantic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern research of museum archaeological collections, their attribution and digitizing are relevant questions of science, culture, and education in the world. The paper presents archaeological materials of the Siberian Upper Paleolithic sites Mal'ta and Buret' and the ways of their systematization and documentation in a form of an information system on the internet. The system has a full-fledged item attribution, scientific description and extensive multimedia support including 3D models and macro photographs. The collections were obtained during the excavations under the direction of M. M. Gerasimov and A. P. Okladnikov, carried out in the early to mid-20th century; the unique artifacts from the collections are kept in the funds of various museums in different cities of Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Irkutsk) in a scattered and unsystematic form. Our project is aimed to the developing of the documentation of unique items from the collection of the Upper Paleolithic Mal'ta-Buret' archaeological culture and presenting the results in a systematic way with visual materials. The collection includes a number of anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, ornithomorphic figurines, ornamented discs and plates, as well as items of personal ornamentation, and other unique artefacts. As part of the project, we took photographs and macro photographs of the objects, their 3D models using the photogrammetry method, made a detailed description and collected all available publications on them, both modern and the earliest. The art objects of the fragmented collection are systematized and presented in the form of a single virtual collection on the Internet -- Information System of Mal'ta and Buret' Mobile Art. Descriptions, photographic images and three-dimensional models of objects, the results of microscopic studies and trace analysis have been published. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]