Bear-headed stone wands from Siberia

The paper investigates three stone wands surmounted with sculptured bear'sheads. The objects were found near the Itkul Lake (the Altai) (Fig. 1, 1), on the Oka River,a tributary of Angara in the region of Bratsk (Fig. 1, 2), and at the Vzvoz settlementin the Sergushkin Island of the Angara (Krasnoyarsk Territory) (Fig. 1, 3). When discussingthe symbolic meaning of the objects, the author establishes a relationship between ritualpractices of the Siberian aboriginals in which bear cult and its head in particular waswidely spread. The discussed ideas are united by the motif of raising bear's head/skullon a height, which corresponds to a bear-wand construction. Functionally, bear cult isconsidered within the context of Vedic-Siberian parallels, especially certain similaritiesbetween functions of the Indo-Arian god Varuna and socio-regulating meaning of a bear-like personage for the Siberian peoples.