Altai-Sayan Region and Southern Siberia

The hall is located in the same part of the Winter Palace as the palace guardhouse. It is part of the Antiquities of Siberia exhibit, which acquaints visitors with the culture and traditions of the steppe people of Sayano-Altai and Transbaikal from the Scythian Epoch to the Middle Ages. The population that lived in the Minusinsk Hollow, in what is now Khakassia and the Krasnoyarsk Krai, in the Scythian Epoch, left behind artifacts of the so-called Tagar culture (an island on lake Tagar near the city of Minusinsk). Sheep herding and agriculture played a meaningful role in the lives of the Tagars. Various crafts reached a high level of development, particularly bronze working, as the wonderful examples of the applied arts, in the so-called animal-centred style that are presented in this hall indicate. The artifacts of the new mixed population that appeared in the Minusinsk Hollow at the beginning of the Common Era are described as antiquities of the Tashtyk culture (named for the place where the excavations took place, on the Tashtyk creek). The plaster funerary masks, articles made from bone, clay and wood, carved miniatures, the open-work bronze belt buckles, decorations and weapons in this hall attract particular attention.