Kamyana Mohyla - Rock Art of Ukraine

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Kamyana Mohyla: Rock Art of Ukraine

What is Kamyana Mohyla?

Introduction

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Location Map of Kamyana Mohyla

There is only one major rock art location in Ukraine. Some minor sites and panels are also known, especially in the Carpathians and Crimean Mountains, but they are few and remain barely studied. In contrast, Kamyana Mohyla (Stone Grave in Ukr.) is a large, complex, and complicated location, with archaeological and rock art assemblages attributed to the vast time span (at least) from the Mesolithic to the 19th century. Furthermore, it has been recognized as a unique rock art location for almost 130 years and has undergone several large research campaigns. Unfortunately, the only comprehensive and digital recording of Kamyana Mohyla's rock art began recently and was interrupted by the Russian aggressive intervention in Ukraine.

The uniqueness of Kamyana Mohyla is fostered by the same feature that affects the whole of Ukrainian history and archaeology - its frontier location. Being located at the edge of the Steppe and the Forest-Steppe zones in Ukraine, or, in a broader context - on the Western Edge of the Eurasian Steppe belt, this site shares mutual contexts both with European and Asian rock art locations and is reminiscent of the artistic traditions from Norway to Mongolia. Furthermore, the absence of other locations of this kind within a radius of more than 1000 km from it makes Kamyana Mohyla even more unique. It is literally the only site of its kind.

Western slope of Kamyana Mohyla. A sign marks the entrance to the Bull Cave. In the background - the museum building

Kamyana Mohyla is a 12-meter-tall Hill of sandstone slabs on the bank of the Molochnaya River in the North Azov Sea region, in the relatively flat and grassy landscape of the Ukrainian Steppe. It is formed with hundreds of large sandstone blocks that used to be a single entity but cracked and broke off long before first observed by humans. As sandstone cracked, the hill received more and more hollow spaces - caves and grottoes. Some of them were later filled in with sand, and others remain open till now. These caves and the openly exposed sandstone slabs are a perfect fit for rock art production - especially when they form a closed and hardly accessible space where one would expect to find the rock art.

The interior of Kamyana Mohyla caves

The sandstone of Kamyana Mohyla is rather special. Further research is needed to clarify its age, origin, and formation history. The quartz-rich grains are relatively big, sometimes up to 3 mm, and are heavily cemented, supposedly around fourteen billion years ago. While in some places it crumbles and crawls, in other cases, engraving it is extremely complicated. Furthermore, the Steppe conditions foster the formation of the desert varnish on top of sandstone slabs, making the surface even harder.

Yet, most rock art objects here are made with the reduction of the stone surface. Some of the engravings are additionally covered with red ocher. Still, no studies of its organic component have been performed so far, so engraved surfaces remain the most studied rock art objects at Kamyana Mohyla. This issue complicates a reliable chronological interpretation of rock art. Most petroglyphs are attributed to some age, from Mesolithic to modern times. While the attribution for the most iconic panels is somewhat reliable, others remain under debate. Different caves and slabs are usually attributed to various periods. However, there are overlaps (two or more locations being attributed to the same period) and superimpositions (a diachronic use of the exact location throughout millennia).

History of Research

Early stage (before USSR)

One of the Horse Blocks during the excavations of 1938

The first written record about Kamyana Mohyla comes from the diaries of German doctor Johann Jacob Lerhe, who participated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739. During Field Marshal General Lassi's Crimean campaign, Lerhe wrote a detailed description of the landscape, everyday life, and history of the region, including Kamyana Mohyla: “The rock is not high; its diameter is about 1 / 2 verst [533 meters], all covered with cracks and composed of clear and very loose yellow sandstone. The cracks are about an ell in length and filled with yellow sand. Numerous cracks and holes are inhabited by eagles. The rock might be climbed up from any direction. For the whole campaign, we did not have such a comfortable camp…”

Records from this time provide the ethnographic name of the site—Yuyun’ Tash, which is Turkic for “gathered mound” and refers to the Nogai nomadic legends of the site being created artificially and brought to life by the ancient warrior, punished by Allah.

The discovery of Kamyana Mohyla as a rock art location dates back to the early phases of archaeological research on the territory of Ukraine, which began in the last decades of the Russian Empire. In 1890, Nikolai Veselovskiy, who excavated the kurgan in the surrounding area of Melitopol, went to Kamyana Mohyla to check the information about local farmers who had found a hoard of five silver coins of Moscow coinage at the slope of the Hill. He noticed engravings on the small cornice, “something similar to an arrow and a branch; below is a circle with crossing lines.” Three years later, Veselovskiy described a cave with images of goats and horses in their natural size engraved on the cave ceiling. However, as the Empire Archaeological Committee was not particularly interested in exploring rock art then, there were no future investigations until Soviet times.

Early Soviet period (until the 1950s)

Further investigation of the sites is related to several research campaigns focused either on the Hill and its caves or the settlement of Kamyana Mohyla 1, located 180 meters west of the Hill. The latter is highly interesting as it presents the most complete stratigraphic sequences of Ukraine's Mesolithic, diving into later periods up to the Iron Age. Excavations and rock art research were performed here as a series of campaigns led by different scholars.

Otto Bader and Valentin Danilenko made the first assessment of the site in 1936 and 1938. They excavated 22 m2 of the settlement and started searching for the rock art panels on the Hill. Presumably, they rediscovered the cave described by Veselovskiy and published the petroglyph of four bulls and numerous cupmarks around them. Besides, they located and recorded 43 new locations with petroglyphs.

Danilenko also claims that several portable rock art objects were found there and transferred to the Melitopol museum, but they were never found after World War II.

In 1947, Danilenko returned to the site to provide full-scale excavations of the settlement near Kamyana Mohyla. During that campaign, Danilenko developed his idea of Kamyana Mohyla as the most essential site representing the Neolithization of the Ukrainian Steppe. This idea remained at the forefront of the scholarly debate until recent years. Regarding rock art research, Danilenko once again entered the cave discovered by Veselovskiy and found several new panels there. He attributed this cave to the Upper Paleolithic and named it Mammoth Cave (now known as the Bull Cave).

The Threat of The Water Reservoir and the Late Soviet Era (1950 - 1980s)

Mykhailov and Danilenko during the Kamyana Mohyla excavation in the early 1970s Kamyana Mohyla: Rock Art of Ukraine

Mykhailov (left) and Danilenko (right) during the Kamyana Mohyla excavation in the early 1970s

The next round of rock art research at Kamyana Mohyla occurred in the 1950s. It was impacted by the USSR government's decision to construct several water reservoirs in southern Ukraine. The plan included constructing a dam on the Molochna River - the entire archaeological landscape around the river was meant to be flooded. Moreover, the damn itself was meant to be constructed through the Kamyana Mohyla Hill itself, meaning the immediate destruction of the site. Therefore, Ukrainian archaeologist Mykola Rudinskiy launched a massive campaign to provide the complete excavation and investigation of the rock art site and the settlement and prepare it for destruction. Luckily, the water reservoir project was abandoned due to the lack of resources. However, Rudinskiy spent five field seasons there, working on documenting archaeological and rock art assemblages. Rudinskiy’s approach to rock art documentation was much more pedantic and careful than that of previous project leaders. He fostered the geodetic survey of the site, tracing, photographing, and gypsum stamping all engraved blocks he could reach (to the extent he had the resources). His map, composed in 1951, includes over 400 engraved stones and 37 examined locations. In 1952, Rudinskiy found the first recorded portable rock art objects near the place that was later named Churinga Cave. He also pays a salary to the local farmers, using his personal costs to pursue the preservation of the landscape.

In the 1970s, Valentin Danilenko returned to the site with the ambition to provide extensive rock art research. He entered as many potential caves as possible. He discovered new locations—Churinga Cave, where numerous portable rock art specimens, interpreted as Late Mesolithic fish figurines, were found, and Wizard Cave, featuring engravings that he attributes to the Upper Paleolithic of the region and the portable art objects, but also a Hunnic burial and artifacts related to it. Later, Danilenko will convert these results into a monograph, developing his typology of the Kamyana Mohyla rock art, claiming the Upper Paleolithic attribution of the engraving from Bull Cave and Wizard Cave. This hypothesis, however, was dismantled by further investigations.

The final years of the USSR and the Independence Epoch (1980s - till now)

After Danilenko died in 1982, the activities around Kamyana Mohyla were taken over by Borys Mykhailov. Due to his constant efforts, the State Reserve was established here in 1982 and turned into the National Historical and Archaeological Reserve “Kamyana Mohyla” in 2008. Moreover, in 2006, the Reserve began the process of nominating Kamyana Mohyla as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but this never happened due to the war in Ukraine. Besides, Mykhailov did intense excavation and rock art research on the sandstone Hill, discovering new locations and re-recording the known ones. He systematically described 65 rock art locations on the hill and excavated approximately 225 portable rock art specimens at the site. He also dismantled Danilenko’s Upper Paleolithic hypothesis regarding the engravings in the Bull Cave, replacing it with the Eneolithic one, and published the volume on the petroglyphs of Kamyana Mohyla. To these days, this is the most complete description of the site in Ukrainian. Though Mykhailov’s methods were up-to-date in the 1990s, his interpretations sometimes were too daring and far-reaching, prompting further reconceptualization on the site.

The last phase of the site investigation started in 2011, together with the large international excavation project at Kamyana Mohyla 1. The excavations were led by Dr. Nadiia Kotova and brought to a new level of understanding of the Mesolithic and Neolithic of the Ukrainian Steppe. Simultaneously, efforts were made to foster the digital rock art research of Kamyana Mohyla, reconsider and rediscover the locations, actualize the information, and introduce the site to the international audience. The first attempts of that kind happened in 2017 and 2018, following the discovery of portable rock art objects in the Mesolithic layers of the settlement. This time also features the photogrammetric study of some rock art objects and the excavation of other settlements, burial sites, and suggested ritual locations in the surroundings of the Hill.

Since 2014, Dr. Kotova and her team have repeatedly attempted to foster the digital study of the site. However, the low international recognition of Ukrainian rock art research and the low level of digital expertise, typical for Ukrainian archaeology at that time, prevented securing international support for digitizing Kamyana Mohyla.

The site was occupied by the Russian armed forces and occupational administrations in March 2022. The portable art and archaeological assemblages from the archives and funds of the Reserve were illicitly transferred to Russia. This caused an unsolicited pause in the research activities in that part of Ukraine and paralyzed Ukrainian rock art research in general. However, Ukrainian scholars continue processing, interpreting, and publishing their results, including 3D models, papers, and monographs on the rock art of Ukraine.

The most significant rock art artifacts

Sculpture in the Dragon Cave

Sculpture in Dragon Cave, view from the right

Different caves and sandstone slabs at Kamyana Mohyla are featured with rock art panels, usually attributed to different time spans. There are many of those complicated to attribute with any kind of certainty before reexamination or recontextualization. On the one hand, it is because systematic study is necessary, preferably with a digital approach. On the other hand, many locations examined during the last decades proved the previous recording to be non-reliable, making it a poor basis for the interpretative conclusions. There are, however, several locations with relatively reliable attribution that introduce the broad chronological span of the Kamyana Mohyla rock art.

Mesolithic

The Mesolithic rock art of Kamyana Mohyla was mainly made by representatives of the Late Mesolithic societies with the river-oriented economy, which is typically associated with the Kukrek culture or Surskyi para-Neolithic culture (IX-VI millennia BCE). Mesolithic assemblages of Kamyana Mohyla 1 are rich with the materials left by these societies, including fish bones, shell middens, flint figurines of fish, portable rock art objects, etc. These societies are considered to have left fish-related engravings in the Dragon Cave, Fish Cave, and Churinga Cave.

Relief image of a fish from the so-called Dolphin Cave

Dragon Cave is a small hollow space between three large sandstone slabs, now filled with sand. In the middle of this cave is a relatively large ellipsoid sandstone protrusion featuring numerous geometric motifs, including double zigzags, zigzags, lines, and grids. The whole protrusion, with the engravings on it, represents the snout of a catfish-a large river fish and a typical catch in the rivers of Southeastern Ukraine. It was first found in 1985 and has rarely been studied since then.

The top right part of the sculpture contains an image of a sandal with a different chronological contribution. While the digital examination confirms its later position in the relative chronology of the panel, its rock art context points towards numerous sandal images emerging in Ukraine and all over Europe during the late IV - early III millennia BCE, at the outbreak of the Early Bronze Age in the region.

A relief ceiling of location Number 6 Kamyana Mohyla: Rock Art of Ukraine

A relief ceiling of location No. 6

Another concentration of Mesolithic rock art here is associated with the assemblages from the Churinga Cave. During the campaigns of 1973, 1974, and 1985, almost 170 portable rock art objects spanning up to 50 cm long and fifteen kilograms wide were found. Some of these objects show signs of wear and presumably were used as a tool. Others, however, are more figurative and introduce many fish figurines with snouts, tails, and fins, sometimes also featured with zigzag ornamentation. Only a few are naturalistic; some are abstract or barely recognizable. However, the concentration of the portable art objects and other sandstone objects in a cave without any additional assemblage elements points toward the cave's sacral role and the structured character of the deposition over time.

Smaller rock art locations - namely, the Fish Cave, the Dolphin Cave, and possibly others - can be convincingly attributed to the Mesolithic based on the fish-oriented imagery. While the connection between fish imagery and the assemblages of Kamyana Mohyla 1 provides a solid ground for their attribution to the particular archaeological period, more focused research should be done before any more specific interpretation.

A “Rain Bull” panel

Eneolithic

Eneolithic images are the most naturalistic and apparent among the rock art of Kamyana Mohyla. The most figurative and easy-to-attribute assemblage is related to the Bull Cave, which was discovered by Veselovskiy in 1890 and excavated by Bader, Danilenko, and then Mykhailov throughout the 20th century.

Eneolithic artifacts, including diagnostic pottery fragments, flint tools, and arrowheads, were found here. These artifacts are typically attributed to the first half of the IV millennia BCE.

Rock art in the cave is mainly represented by a set of naturalistic depictions made with polishing and contouring at the cave walls and ceiling, sometimes additionally painted with ocher. One of the most well-known panels is located to the left of the entrance and contains images of four bulls next to each other (so-called "Bulls in circular defense"). Two of these are bigger, their contours are filled with ocher, and their silhouettes are featured with several cupmarks. Mykhailov additionally points out an image of the dog nearby.

A "Row of animals" panel

Further in the cave, another large panel with naturalistic depictions of animals is located. It was severely damaged in ancient times, and some figures are preserved only partially. There is an image of three ungulates, presumably a deer and two bulls. Only the bottom part of one of the bulls was preserved. An image of the dog and a non-recognizable animal infant are located nearby, along with up to fifteen cupules. Near this panel, the large block depicting a deer, a goat, two large bulls, and several cupules filled with ocher was found. This latter was transferred to Kyiv in 1947 and is stored in the Archaeological Museum of the Institute of Archaeology of the NAS of Ukraine.

These images of bulls and other ungulates and other ungulates find reliable analogies in the Eneolithic of Eastern Kazakhstan (Tamgaly, Eshkiolmes), Western Mongolia, and other locations of Central Asia, representing the connection between Kamyana Mohyla and the rock art of the Eurasian Steppe. The chronologically dated Eneolithic burials in Velyka Oleksandrivka, Southern Ukraine, also support the attribution.

Besides these panels, the cave contains a singular image of an unrecognizable ungulate (presumably a bull) and two large panels with geometric signs, zigzags, and horse images covered with ocher. Mykhailov reports more locations in the cave, but by the time of digital investigations, their rediscovery requires removing much of the sand, which causes a risk of cave destruction and severe damage to the site. Therefore, further investigation must be supported by the construction and preservation works.

Burials of the Bronze Age

A sandstone burial box from Kamyana Mohyla surroundings

Though Mykhailov reported the intense Early Bronze Age occupation of Kamyana Mohyla, the archaeological and rock art evidence for that is relatively minor. A scarce archaeological assemblage of the Early Bronze Age Yamna culture was associated with the settlement of Kamyana Mohyla 1. However, besides the sandal in the Dragon Cave (see the Mesolithic paragraph), only a few images of the bull harnesses and wagons can so far be convincingly attributed to the Early Bronze Age or the Bronze Age in general. The issue is complicated by the similarities in the pastoral-oriented nomadic way of life practiced by societies that inhabited the region from the IV millennia BCE up to the 19th century CE that limited changes in the iconographic tradition. However, the burial sites in the surroundings of Kamyana Mohyla point to the presence of the Early Bronze Age nomads here.

In 2017, our team excavated the ground burial, featuring the burial box made from sandstone slabs transferred from Kamyana Mohyla. The box is approximately 2.3 x 1.5 m and consists of stones weighing up to 2000 kilograms. The radiocarbon dating of the buried returned the date of 2570 - 2460 cal. BCE. It featured what is suggested to be the ritual depositions: the upside-down vessel, attributed to the Yamna culture, and the skull and extremities of a domesticated bovid. Similar burials are known in the surroundings from the excavation campaigns of the second half of the 20th century (though due to incomplete recording, it is impossible to state that the stone constructions there consisted of the Kamyana Mohyla sandstone). Moreover, the archaeological research in 2021, provided by Viktor Dzhos on the slopes of the Hill, revealed several more ritual pits featuring bull skulls and extremities, similar to those found near the burial. Besides being important evidence of Early Bronze Age life near Kamyana Mohyla, these findings indicate that the site's surroundings (the so-called Kamyana Mohyla landscape) were a vivid environment that was closely connected to the site itself.

Iron Age

Typically, Iron Age assemblages from Kamyana Mohyla are associated with the depiction of horses and are attributed to the Scythian presence in the Ukrainian Steppe during the VII century BCE - II century CE. While some of the horse depictions at Kamyana Mohyla do not necessarily point to this attribution, others meet numerous analogies among the Scythian rock art imaginary in the Eurasian Steppe. Only three of them were photographed and described before the occupation of the site due to their low accessibility.

Furthermore, numerous images of a footstep from the Footstep Block are most probably related to the Scythian imagination as well.

Horse images from Kamyana Mohyla, attributed to the Iron Age

Besides Scythians, the Iron Age at Kamyana Mohyla is featured with the presence of Sarmatian tribes - tamgas (borderline or tribal signs) at the top of Kamyana Mohyla certainly point to the Sarmatian context, and thus, can be attributed to the II century BCE - II century CE.

After that, Huns visited the site. There are no signs of their rock art creation activity, but the Reserve features two burials - one inside the Wizard cave and the other - near the Bronze Age burial box, dated to the V century CE. The one in the Wizard cave contained a glass vessel and several diagnostic pots, allowing secure attribution.

Later, in Medieval and post-Medieval times, the site was visited by the Nogai nomads (as evidenced by the 19th-century arrowheads found inside the Bull Cave) and even German Mennonites, who habituated this territory in the second half of the 18th century. A signature “Peter S.” on one of the slabs on the north slope of the Hill points to the Mennonite person who (as suggested by ethnographic records) used to take care of the site during the 19th century.

This is, however, less than 20% of all petroglyphs of Kamyana Mohyla - a small part that can be attributed to any archaeological period or prehistoric process with any level of certainty. Other engravings and portable rock art objects - like those from the Wizard cave that is suggested to be Upper Paleolithic - require more archaeological and rock art research, digital study, contextualization, and simply conceptualization as an assemblage before any reliable conclusions can be made.

3D models from Kamyana Mohyla

3D models from Kamyana Mohyla are available here.

Simon Radchenko