Ritual on the Rock. Reflection of Totemic Rites of the Deer Cult in the Rock Art of Northern Eurasia

There are numerous complex scenes, including images of people and deer, among the rock paintings of Northern Europe and Siberia. Some of them can be interpreted as rituals (Alta, Glosa, Surukhtakh-Kaya, etc.). We consider them in the context of the deer cult, which developed in deer hunter societies and survived at a later time. Totemic and cosmological myths were the essence of this cult, they were inextricably linked with rituals — calendrical, which correlated with natural and economic cycles, and liminal, conditioned by the life cycle of people. Archaeological materials and rock paintings of the Mesolithic-Neolithic of Northern Europe and Northern Asia indicate that the cult of the deer played a leading role in the myths and ritual complex. We used the method of ethno-archaeological reconstruction for the interpretations of the compositions. We compared some narratives of rock carvings in Northern Europe and Siberia with totemic rites of the indigenous peoples of the subarctic zone. These ceremonies were supposed to guarantee success in hunting and, at the same time, the reproduction of deer. Imitating deer, creation of models of deer, killing of a sacrificial deer, dismemberment, joint eating and preservation of the remains for further restoration – those were the main elements of the rituals. These ritual actions are reflected in the rock art of Northern Eurasia

Ancient history · Archaeology · Cult · Geography · Indigenous · Liminality · Mesolithic · Mythology · Rock art · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · Ecology