Finding of a stone stele with rare decoration at the Rschaan-Udsuer-Had burial ground in Mongolia

The article is intended to analyze and study a rare finding of a small stone stele found on a surface of archaeological site Rschaan-Udsuer-Had in Mongolia in the beginning of the 1980s. During the archaeological research consisting of the Soviet-Mongolian Historical and Cultural Expedition, the author had a chance to inspect this archaeological site, on the surface of which a low stele with an unconventional decoration was found. A narrow perpendicular stripe dividing the stone base into two unequal parts is embossed on the stone stele. A small circle is embossed on the front-end surface of a smaller part of the stone stele. Possibly, the stone stele may symbolize an ancient anthropomorphic character. Other various ancient objects were found in the site, related to different archaeological cultures. They include an ancient mound khirigsuur, menhirs, and plate entombment of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age located in the Central Asia. We have some reasons to suggest that the stone stele under study, divided by a perpendicular stripe and having an embossed circle on the front-end part, was used to schematically represent an ancient warrior, in whose memory it could be installed. In contrast to the “deer stones”, whereon different kinds of weaponry and military equipment including bows, arrows, gorytoses, swords, and daggers, are represented, this stele does not contain such images. It is possible that this rare finding of the stone stele should be related to pseudo anthropomorphic stone plates preceding ancient and medieval tradition of installing anthropomorphic stone statues.