TO THE ISSUE OF DOCUMENTING THE WALL PAINTINGS IN KAPOVA CAVE (A STUDY OF THE CHAMBEROF SIGNS)
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2021-01-02

Kapova cave is situated in the Southern Urals (Russia). The Upper Paleolithic wall paintings were discovered in 1959. The futher archaeological research was conducted by O. Bader (1960-1978) and V. Shchelinsky (1982-1991). The Southern Urals archaeological expedition of the Lomonosov Moscow State University started to work at Kapova cave in 2008.

Since the discovery of the paintings in Kapova cave there have been made several attempts to document them provided by archaeologists (O. Bader, V. Shchelinsky), and by specialists in natural sciences (A. Ryumin, Y. Lyakhnitsky, A. Solodeinikov). But there is still no complete catalogue with all the necessary materials. One of the main problems encountered by the Southern Urals archaeological expedition of MSU during the cataloguing of the wall paintings were the problems in identifying images of poor preservation, determining boundaries for measurements, co-relationship of separated stains. The Chamber of Signs contains about 60 images, including zoomorphic figures, geometric signs and amorphous objects. Many of them are hidden under the calcite crust, which complicates their identification. Thus, working with the wall paintings of Kapova Cave requires great attention to the details: relief, color, location of the stains, geomorphology. The importance of this problem is determined by the need for clear measurement criteria for monitoring of wall images. The authors offer a new approach to documenting the wall paintings of Kapova cave, based on the latest results of work in the Chamber of Signs.


Author(s): Anisovets, Julia - Zhitenev, Vladislav (Lomonosov Moscow State University)