Heritage Protection and Rock Art Regions in Russia

Even some years ago rock art sites seemed to be inexhaustible part of Russian cultural heritage, unfortunately part of corpus was irreparably lost. Besides plenty of natural processes involved in the rock art decay the most disastrous damage have been caused by huge industrial projects, the rock art sites of paramount importance have been submerged partly or completely.
Rock art already became a focus of study in Russia more than two and a half centuries ago, hundreds of rock art sites have been revealed and recorded. They form local groups, provinces or areas with their specific natural, environmental characteristics. Each local area of primitive art has its own style of images, with its own iconography, aesthetics and set of motifs. The originality and the specific features of these rock art areas were determined by peculiarities of the historical process of each region, as well as on local geographic, climatic, environmental, ethnic and cultural characteristics. Besides variations in the style, technique and correlation between the images on the particular surface, each rock art area has its special favourite themes. Climatic factor and human adaptation to nutrition source determined the central zoomorphic motif.