Mezen mittens (Leshukonye village)
The common origins of both the East Slavic, in particular the North Russian, and the Mountain Tajik (i.e., East Iranian) ornamental tradition are evidenced not only by works of applied art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but also by archaeological materials; so, for example, intricately drawn swastikas on a clay carved mazar Mavlono Muhammad-Ali 10—12 century find an analogy in the drawing of a stamp on the bottom of a vessel from the 11th-12th century from Staraya Ryazan.
As for such archaic, dating back to Andronovo, ornaments on the other side of the Pamirs, on the territory of Hindustan, it is well known what a huge role the swastika plays in the rituals, ceremonies, and decor of India – a symbol of the sun, eternity, and happiness. M. Ruziev, noting that the Central Asian swastika compositions are related to the ancient Indian ones, focuses on the ancient tradition, following which on the day of the Yatra holiday, the brahmans in desert places arranged large sacrificial fires, each of which consisted of four swastikas.
It must be said that such compositions of four swastikas, grouped around a common center, are characteristic not only of ancient Indian, but also of both the South Russian (Tambov, Voronezh, Kursk, Ryazan) and North Russian traditions.
Moreover, in Vologda typesetting weaving and embroidery, combining swastikas into groups of four is one of the most common techniques, as evidenced by such materials from the Vologda Regional Museum, as the 19th century Veliky Ustyug fly embroidered with white thread (Table 17), typesetting spacers of the middle and second half of the 19th century (Table 18), luxurious, almost half-meter typesetting end, towels made in the second half of the 19th century by the Tarnog peasant woman Akulina Yermolina (Table 19), homespun tablecloth decor of the late 19th century, etc. (Tables 20, 21). And, finally, E. E. Kuzmina, noting that home pottery is one of the defining features in traditional cultures and the most important ethnic determinant, writes that, starting from the Neolithic and up to the Iron Age in the steppe, in contrast to Central Asian agricultural centers, not painted, but stamped geometric ornament dominated. She believes that: “the pottery of the Vedic Aryans was akin to the ceramic production of the Iranian-speaking peoples, and the origins of this common tradition can be traced not in the agricultural cultures of Iran and Western Asia, but in the pastoral cultures of the Eurasian steppes, primarily in the Andronovo”. This is all the more obvious that: “the analogies in the technique of Vedic pottery with Andronovo are so numerous and significant, and the technological methods are so specific that this gives grounds to associate the origin of the traditions of home pottery production of the ancestors of the Vedic Aryans with the carriers of the Andronov cultural community”. And although, as noted by E. E. Kuzmin, there is a difference in that the Andronovo ceramics are richly decorated, and there are few such ornaments on the Aryan ceramics of Hindustan, “the presence of a stamped ornament is noted in Vedic sources” and “all elements of the Andronovo ornamental complex are still preserved in the folk art of India”. Following E. E. Kuzmina, we state that all the elements of the Andronovo ornamental complex were preserved until the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century also in typesetting weaving and embroidery of North Russian (Vologda, Arkhangelsk) peasant women. E. E. Kuzmina writes: “A thorough analysis in terms of the tradition of the semantics of images of the fine arts, for which archeology already provides rich material, will apparently be of decisive importance in the study of the complex ethnic history of South Central Asia and Afghanistan.”
It seems that a comprehensive consideration of the development of ornaments common to the North Russian and Indo-Iranian traditions, from ancient times to the present day, testifies to the common, deeply archaic origins of these traditions, to the long process of development and transformation of the ancient archetype, to the joint development of more diverse, new ornamental patterns, about the huge genetic relationship of these peoples. Similar ornaments, of course, can occur among different peoples, but it is difficult to believe that people are separated by thousands of kilometers distances and millennia (unless they are ethnogenetically related), such complex ornamental compositions can appear completely independently of each other, repeating even in the smallest details, moreover, they perform the same sacred functions of amulets and signs of kinship.
Making a conclusion about the indisputable kinship of the archaic East Slavic and Indo-Iranian complexes, we must emphasize that, despite the significant diversity of these ornaments in the Indo-Iranian region, the most archaic types and their greatest diversity are characteristic of East Slavic, specifically North Russian folk art. It is here that practically all links of the millennial ornamental tradition have been preserved intact, starting with the Upper Paleolithic rhombo-meander motifs and up to the most complex Abashev, Pozdnyakov and Andronovo ornamental complexes.
All this allows us to conclude that it was on the territory of Eastern Europe that the most ancient geometric ornamental complexes were formed, which became sacred symbols of the Indo-Iranian peoples, on the one hand, and did not lose their sacred functions of amulets and signs of kinship among the East Slavic peoples, until the beginning of the 20th century, with another.