The Gobustan Rock Artwork Cultural Panorama is a nationwide park in Azerbaijan that kinds a bridge connecting the previous and current, a reserve official informed Anadolu Company (AA) in an interview.
“Simply as Azerbaijan kinds an financial, cultural and historic bridge between Europe and Asia, Gobustan additionally stands as a bridge between historic and trendy occasions,” mentioned Fikrat Abdullayev, deputy director of the reserve.
Gobustan, a hill and mountain website occupying the southeast finish of the Larger Caucasus mountain ridge, is about 65 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of the capital, Baku, on the western shores of the Caspian.
Abdullayev mentioned Gobustan hosts an array of rock engravings depicting photographs of looking, fauna, flora and the existence of the area’s historic inhabitants. The park was declared a historic landmark of Azerbaijan in 1966 within the hope that this standing would protect the traditional carvings, relics, mud volcanoes and gas-stones of the area for future generations.
He famous that in 2007, Gobustan was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Website on the World Heritage Committee’s thirty first session held in Christchurch, New Zealand. The UNESCO World Heritage Middle mentioned this website provided an excellent vary of greater than 6,000 rock engravings stretching again nearly 40,000. “The reserve additionally options beforehand inhabited caves, the websites of outdated settlements and burial mounds, all reflecting an intensive human use by the inhabitants of the world over the moist interval that adopted the final Ice Age, from the Higher Paleolithic to the Center Ages,” based on UNESCO. UNESCO additionally refers to Gobustan as having “excellent common worth for the standard and density of its rock artwork engravings.”
In 2019, rock photographs from the location have been included on the Islamic World Heritage Record at a unprecedented assembly of the Islamic World Heritage Committee held in Rabat, Morocco. Abdullayev mentioned the open-air museum, which covers an space of over 4,500 hectares, is among the locations the place the earliest examples of portray, music and dance tradition have been fashioned.
“These days, we are able to discover the motifs of Gobustan rock artwork in varied areas of artwork, akin to sculpture and carpet weaving,” he mentioned, including that being a full member of the Worldwide PRAT-CARP Affiliation – a European rock artwork group – allowed for higher assets to protect Gobustan in partnership with museums from the world over.
The variety of vacationers visiting the reserve will increase yearly, Abdullayev mentioned. “The reserve has recorded over 130,000 guests in 2019.” In the course of the busy summer time season the reserve welcomes greater than 1,000 vacationers all through the day, he mentioned.
Abdullayev mentioned guests come from varied nations world wide, together with the U.S., U.Okay., Russia, India and additional afield. A number of well-known Azerbaijani motion pictures have been set within the space, he added.
Ongoing analysis for rocks
Noting the primary archaeological excavations within the space started within the Thirties, Abdullayev mentioned Azerbaijani archaeologist Isak Jafarzade in 1939-1940 found 3,500 rock work, drawings and indicators, in addition to artifical pits and holes in rocks in Gobustan.
Since 1965, a particular scientific expedition has been engaged in investigating the rock engravings of the location, the place archaeological analysis of greater than 20 dwellings and shelters, and greater than 40 burial mounds have been carried out, Abdullayev mentioned.
In 2016, work began on the reserve space for making a digital database catalog for rock arts within the Cingirdag-Yazilitapa space of Gobustan, he mentioned, including that because of this, all illustrated stones on this space, in addition to within the newly found Sona rock, have been documented.
“Some 541 new photographs have been found throughout the Jinghirdag Moutain-Yazylytepe hillside, beforehand assessed from 877 recorded photographs, and 440 new photographs have been found on already documented stones, whereas the remaining 101 photographs have been discovered on 18 new stones discovered in the course of the research within the space,” Abdullayev mentioned. The most recent variety of recorded rock arts within the website has exceeded 7,000, he added.
The official went on so as to add that in 2019, the park’s analysis workforce, along with consultants from the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Azerbaijan Nationwide Academy of Sciences, carried out archaeological excavations alongside the decrease slopes of the Boyukdash Mountain space, revealing a medieval village and a non secular website seemingly constructed within the Bronze Age.
Stone “gavaldash” tambourine
The gavaldash is an historic tambourine, the sound of which resembles a musical instrument. Rahima Mehdiyeva, an tour information at Gobustan open air museum, demonstrated that by tapping on the gavaldash with small stones, one can get varied clear sounds, paying homage to a drum .
She defined that the gavaldash consisted of shell limestone and was flat, producing varied sounds relying on the place it was tapped and the density of the shells within the composition of the limestone. Mehdiyeva mentioned its distinctness emerged from the vacancy and porosity of the shells.
She additionally careworn that the petroglyphs – photographs created by eradicating a part of a rock floor by incising, pecking, carving and abrading – largely depict oxen and girls.
The bigger the petroglyph, the sooner it may be dated, she mentioned, noting that the photographs was once drawn on its authentic form and dimension throughout historic occasions, whereas photographs of extra trendy ages have been drawn in a schematic, scaled approach.