ON THE CULTURAL ATTRIBUTION OF ONE TYPE OF THE SROSTKI BELT SET

In the autumn of 2021, a new medieval site of Aktyuba was discovered in the Southern Urals. As a result of the research, a sacrificial complex was discovered, consisting of a richly decorated horse harness with polymetallic (silver, gold) shields in the Hungarian (Carpathian) style, as well as a belt consisting of a buckle and shields of the Altai (Srostki) style. The subsequent cartography of such materials indicates that they are distributed in sites of the Hungarian type, located in a strip from Altai to the Carpathian basin. Radiocarbon dating of the complex of the Srostki and Carpathian styles at the burial grounds of Uyelgi and Aktyuba made it possible to determine that they coexist in the Southern Trans-Urals within the 9th century, i. e ., before the exodus of the Hungarians to a new homeland. In this regard, the authors conclude that the “Carpathian” style seems to be a new special pictorial concept, which is based on the ideas and pictorial plots of the Sayano-Altai. It is a kind of rethought and artistic reworking of the same plant ornamentation, which is based on flowers, leaves, buds and fruits of the Tree of Life, as well as plots of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic Buddhist-Nestorian semantics. From this follows the assumption that the origin of Hungarian pictorial motifs did not take place in the Carpathian basin, but in the contact zone, which was the Southern Trans-Urals, under the direct influence of immigrants from the Sayano-Altai regions. At the same time, the production and raw materials resources of the Southern Urals are by no means inferior to the Altai deposits. In this regard, it is not accidental that the direct mixing of these styles takes place in the burial complexes of Uyelgi and Aktyuba.