This allows us to consider them as forehead or breast plates”. Interestingly, burial grounds such as Lugovoy and Nesterovsky, also located in the Assinsky gorge, are characterized by the erection of burial mounds over burials. All this is very similar to the traditions of the Andronovites, as well as the obligatory presence in the burials of vessels and ornaments, and on the latter, as we can see, ornamental motifs were placed, more than traditional for the Andronovo monuments. Similar functions of amulets as double-oval plaques from the Lugovoy burial ground, plaques and pins from Engikal, were probably performed by the forehead corollas-diadems of the 14—13th century BC, found by B. V. Tekhov during excavations of the Tli burial ground in South Ossetia. These tiaras are decorated with geometric shapes – circles, triangles, rhombuses, and, as a rule, meander and swastika images (Table 12). B. V. Tekhov notes that similar diadems were found in one of the Styrfaz cromlechs (North Caucasus), in the village. Gegharot (Armenia), on the territory of Azerbaijan and Iran. It is interesting that the continuous pattern formed by swastikas on some diadems (Table 11) is absolutely identical to the ornamental motif characteristic of the Slavic Przewor culture of the 3rd century BC. – 3rd century AD (Table 11) and repeated on a Russian tile of the 18th century (Table 11). The meander and swastika motifs on the bronze axes of the Koban type from the same Tli burial ground are also of exceptional interest. Intricate swastikas placed on these axes from the 12th-9th century BC have analogues in the ornamentation of Pozdnyakovsk vessels, culture of closely related and simultaneous Andronovo.

Koban ornament

Koban ornament

For example, a swastika with numerous “shoots” at the ends, placed on the bottom of one of the clay pots found in the Pozdnyakovsky burial ground “Fefelova Bora” (Ryazan) (Table 12), is repeated with each line on Koban bronze axes (Table 13). But we see such precisely complexly drawn swastikas on one of the maces of the crypt near the villages. Engikal (Table 12), they are present in the ornamentation of finds from a number of places in Azerbaijan, for example, on a clay stamp, as well as on the walls of the temple, the plaster of the dugout and the pintadere (Table 12), on the wall near the hearth and pintadera of the village of Babadervish (Table 1. 12). The same intricate swastika adorns the Koban buckle of the 6—5th century BC (Table 12) and a Scythian vessel from the 6th century BC from the village of Aksyutintsy on the forest-steppe left bank of the Dnieper (Table 12). The most complex swastika braid, carefully crafted by a master of the 9—7th century BC on one of the Koban bronze axes (Table 7), without the slightest changes, it is repeated in the Russian facial embroidery – the pattern of the royal robes of the Mother of God of the above-mentioned composition “Appearing the Tsarina” (Table 7) and in the embroidery of the Olonets valance of the 19th century (Table 7).

And, finally, almost any, the most complex and whimsical branched swastika pattern, we can easily find among the samples of weaving and embroidery of Vologda peasant women of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

It could be assumed that all these ornamental motifs came from Byzantium into facial embroidery, which adorns religious objects associated with Christian rituals and from it to peasant embroidery and weaving. But there are no such compositions in the Byzantine tradition, which is clearly evidenced by the samples of ornaments published by V.V. Stasov in the album “Slavic and Oriental Ornament Based on the Manuscripts of Ancient and Modern Times”. And at the same time, in medieval psalters, gospels, books of hours, etc. Russia, Armenia, Serbia, Croatia, many elements of Andronovo and Koban decor is constantly present, and, in particular, such characteristic motifs as swastikas of various configurations, jibs, meanders, triangles. They are found to this day in folk ornamentation in the North and Central Caucasus, on the western coast of the Caspian Sea, in Armenia and Azerbaijan.