Of particular interest are the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, embroideries deriving from the North-Eastern sections of Vologda province and the neighboring districts of Arkhangelsk province. Toponymical evidence shows that in those times these parts were hardly populated at all by Finno-Ugric tribes. Most of the names are of a Slavonic origin and furthermore most are extremely ancient, as for instance, Dubrava (which means forest). Thus, of 137 localities in the Tarnoga district of the Vologda region only six have distinctly Finns-Ugric names. We may hence presume that at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries the population here was comprised of direct descendants of those Slavonic (Krivichi?) groups that had migrated to these parts in the 11th century, bringing with them the time-hallowed traditions in their ornamental designs, which succeeding generations brought down almost to the present.
The ornamental designs we shall describe below possess the following salient features. They were commonplace in the North-Eastern districts of Vologda region and current right up to the 1930s. Further they were employed to embellish exclusively articles of a sacral significance, such as women’s blouses, notably the hems, shoulder yokes and sleeves, and also aprons, headdresses, sashes and towels. «The preservation in embroidery of the extremely early stages of human religious mentality… derives from the ritual character of the articles embroidered… the many that could be listed include the bridal kokoshnik diadems, shirts and blouses and mantles of wedding trains.
One special ritual item, long dissociated from its domestic twin, was the richly and intricately embroidered towel. Such towels were employed to offer the traditional bread- and-salt symbol of hospitality and welcome, to serve as the reins of wedding trains, or to carry a coffin and let it down into the grave. They were also used to adorn the «beautiful» corner in the house where the icons were hung, while the icons themselves, were deposited on towels specially made for the purpose», writes Rybakov about this «Tinen folklore». It is precisely such sacred ornamental designs that are to be seen in the Russian folk embroideries from the ethnographical museum in Vologda, which, quantity wise, will further serve as the comparative material used in attempts to elucidate parallels between the ornamental designs of North-Russian embroideries and those of the peoples inhabiting the vast expanses of the Eurasian steppes and forest-steppes at different times in history.
The lozenge and the rhombic meander represent one of the oldest ornamental motifs of the Eurasian tribes. It is to be found in paleolithic times, employed for example, to decorate sundry artifacts of bone, that were recovered from the upper paleolithic Mezin site near Chernigov in the Ukraine. In 1965, paleontologist V. Bibikova surmised that the spiral meander, the broken bands of meander and the rhombic meanders on items recovered from the Mezin site originated as an imitation of the natural design on the ivory of mammoth tusks. She conjectured there from that for upper paleolithic man this motif symbolized the mammoth which in turn embodied, as the basic target of the hunt, the concept of plenty and power (Fig. l).This motif comprised of rhombic meanders, spiral meanders and zigzags or flashes survived over the millennia (Figs. 2, 3, 26 and 27) modifying, but retaining their time-hallowed substance. We encounter this symbol of good fortune and prosperity and as a protective totem on both religious items and on pottery, in other words storages of food and water, again in later cultures, as for instance, the Balkan cultures (Figs. 2 and 6), the South-East European culture, the 5th millennium ВС. Tripolye-Cucuteni culture, etc. Rybakov notes: «The rhombic meander motif is encountered on vessels, especially the lavishly ornamented ritual vessels, on anthropomorphic figures of clay, also of an unquestionably ritual character, and on the clay thrones of goddesses or priestesses».
On Tripolye-Cucuteni pottery we encounter a stable repetition of the meander motif, which already differs to some extent from the upper paleolithic Mezin design, in that it is still more heavily geometrized and stylized (Fig. 7).
Apposite instances are afforded by the decor of the pottery recovered from the Frumushika I, Khebesheshti I, and Gura Veyi sites. All these meander motifs are, as a rule to be observed on pottery of the late Early Period and early Middle Period of the Tripolye-Cucuteni culture.
It should be noted that the swastika design may already be discerned in the bands of the double, right- and left-handed meander on bone artifacts from the Mezin site (Fig. 1). This is one more characteristic motif of Tripolye-Cucuteni decor, used either in its simplest version (Fig. 32) or with projecting lines from each bent arm of the cross (Fig. 52). Further the X-motif characteristic of Tripolye pottery decoration (Fig. 8) and likewise encountered to the north of Tripolye (Fig. 9), as well as the swirling triangle with its scroll head points are transmutations of the meander motif.
Summing up, we may outline a range of ornamental motifs, which though limited and unquestionably not exhausting the entire richness of Tripolye pottery decor, is still sufficient to characterize this culture, which we shall invoke further to draw comparisons with subsequent periods in history. They include the meander and its variants such as the spiral meander, the swastika (Figs. 46, 48, 50 and 51), more complex swastika designs, the 5-motif (Figs, 12 and 13) and the swirling triangle with its scroll head points (Figs. 44 and 49).
To establish the closest affinities, time wise, we shall naturally address ourselves to the pottery of cultures that, at different times existed within the present territory of the USSR on sites once occupied by the Tripolye culture.
Oddly enough such affinities in the pottery of cultures antedating the Timber-Frame (srubnaya) culture, and, for that matter, in the last named culture itself, are few and far between. The basic elements of the decor of Timber-Frame culture pottery, which according to B. Grakov dates to the 16th-12th centuries B.C. are chains of lozenges, rhombic lattices and rows of triangles on the shoulders of vessels, with bodies frequently carrying the characteristic slanted crosses, now and again composed of two intersecting 5-motifs.
Further stages in the evolution of the traditional ornamentation of pottery, incorporating an astounding plethora of sundry versions of the meander and swastika motifs, are to be encountered in the pottery of the Andronovo culture (also of the 17th-12th centuries BC. according to S. Kiselev) immediately contignous to the Timber-Frame culture. These two cultures concurrently existed over a lengthy period throughout the vast expanses of the steppes and forest steppes of the territory that is now the USSR. Kiselev indicated the affinity between the pottery decor of these two cultures observing that «… one cannot fail to note the obvious superiority of even early Andronovo pottery over the kindred Timber-Frame pottery». One cannot but concur. The extraordinary richness and diversity of meander and swastika motifs in Andronovo pottery decor are beautifully illustrated in the artifacts published in treatises concerned with the prehistory of Southern Siberia by Kiselev, in the monograph «The Bronze Age in Western Siberia» by M. Kosarev (Figs. 15 and 16) and also by V. Stokolos (Fig. 17) and F. Axslanova (Figs 18, 28 and 34) in their respective articles. Like the Timber-Frame culture the Andronovo culture with all its different versions ranged over a vast territory. Its western-most artifacts are to be found in the Timber-Frame culture area along the line between Donetsk and Voronezh. In the east the Andronovo culture extended along the southern Trans-Urals up to and including the Minusinsk depression. In the north it was bounded by the Southern Urals, while in the south it entered Northern Afghanistan. According to the evidence N. Chlenova cites in her article, Andronovo pottery in its Alakul version was common in Central Asia between the Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya, especially so along the banks of the Amu-Darya but also in the Kyzylkum desert.
She has indicated the impact of Andronovo pottery in its Fedorovo version, (the classical Andronovo version), and in its Alakul version on Amu-Darya Cherkaskul pottery. She also indicates that now and again Fedorovo type pottery can likewise be encountered in digs along the banks of the Amu-Darya. «Uniting the Amu-Darya region of Cherkaskul pottery with the North-Siberian, Urals and Volga region, we find that the Cherkaskul culture extends for 2,400 km from Kurgan-Tube to Kazan.» In the Amu-Darya region we find Cherkaskul pottery together with Alakul and Tazabagyab pottery;