Experience of Cultural-Chronological and Species Attribution of Ornitomorphic Image from Shalabolinskaya Pisanitsa
Ornithomorphic images in petroglyphs remain a poorly studied topic, so their cultural and chronological attribution or the determination of species is a serious problem for the researcher. One of such images is an engraved image of a bird from the first area of pisanita Shalabolinskaya. That image cannot be confidently attributed to any of the well-known traditions of depicting birds. This article attempts to attribute this image based on methods described in the literature. In the course of the work, problems were identified that arise when working with fragmentary images that do not fit into the existing classification schemes, the need for further work on the systematization of already known petroglyphs with images of ornithomorphic characters is postulated. A new algorithm is proposed for determining the species belonging of the figures of birds on the rocks. The bird from the Shalabolinskaya scribble was identified as belonging to birds of prey, among which the most probable variants are an eagle, a seagull or a nightjar (attribution is made by the shape of the beak and features of the modeling of the eyes). Culturally and chronologically, the image can be tentatively attributed to the Okunev style, based on an analogy with a number of images of birds and bird-headed characters on the steles of the Okunev culture.