Documentation techniques for rock art imagery in mound constructions, the case of a single mound Skalnaya-5 (Askiz district of Khakassia Republic)

Stone slabs with petroglyphs forming burial structures are a separate and specific source for rock art studies. The most widespread re-using of sandstone slabs containing images in the constructions of burial structures is known for Tagar and Tes periods in the Minusinsk basin. However, earlier specimens of rock art, for instance dating from the Bronze Age, are also common at the sites of these periods. In order to reliably attribute the images and establish the chronology of the replaceable fragments of the rock plates, detailed documentation is required not only of the petroglyphs but also of the context of their location in the structures. In addition, as early as at the stage of field research, a special attention is required to the objects with few carvings and a large series of stone slabs with images. In such cases, it is necessary to develop a special flexible indexing system, which will make it possible to take into account not only those images that were found immediately after the initial clearing of the burial structure from the ground, but to supplement the existing numbering scheme with new data in the subsequent process of excavation. The article proposes an approach to documenting stone slabs and steles with images from the structure of a large mound. As an example illustrating the method of documenting and indexing petroglyphs and the context of their localization in the site, the preliminary results of the examination of the kerb from the single mound Skalnaya-5 located in the Askiz district of the Khakassia Republic, by the Institute ofArchaeology and Ethnography of the Russian Academy of Sciences studied in 2021 are provided.