The motif of the bear in a sacrifice posture (full-faced) in the Scytho-Siberian animal style

This paper is a response to the paper written by archaeologist V. V. Ovsyannikov (2013) from Ufa regarding an important motif depicting a bear in a sacrifice posture(the head of the full-faced bear lying on its forepaws) in the Ananyino-Pyany Bor art.The author proposes a well-justified version stating that this motif appeared in the KamaRegion not later than the 5th century BC, originally, as bear protomes on bone and antlerhandles of knives and awls (Buyskoye hillfort etc.).