Памятник, о котором пойдет речь в настоящей статье, публикуется третий раз. Автор взялся еще за одно его издание, чтобы внести поправки в прежнюю интерпретацию святилища, особенно в той ее части, которая касается воссоздания первоначального облика культового комплекса. Ставший мне известным за прошедшие несколько лет сравнительный материал, а именно, курганные поминальники кыпчаков Казахстана, не позволяет теперь столь однозначно, как ранее, трактовать архитектурные остатки, выявленные при раскопках донского святилища. Некоторые новые соображения будут высказаны и о найденном в нем изваянии.
In autumn 2000 in Kamensk region of Rostov province on a watershed of Severskii Donets and Likhaia rivers in Repnyi I burial ground a large barrow of the Bronze Age containing the remains of a Polovtsian sanctuary was explored. It was a quadrangular stone construction 1 m beneath the mound surface, oriented to the cardinals, with an entrance from the east. Its walls had been built from flat wild stone using clay mortar; the dirt floor was covered with clay. Inside the construction there was a shell limestone statue standing vertically and facing an entrance, subsequently broken into several large fragments. In front o f it a pit had been dug out in the floor. Another shallow sacrificial pit containing horse bones was outside near the entrance. The statue from the sanctuary is female, standing, and made using the technique of round volumetric sculpture. It refers to III6 type by S.A.Pletniova’s classification which permits to date the whole complex back to the 12th - early 13th century. Earlier the author of the paper believed that originally the sanctuary had been a low stone house. However, now there is every reason to reconstruct it as a fence similar to memorial fences of the 1tlh-13th cc. Kazakhstan Kypchaks. Some structural features of the sanctuary and the remains of the ritual registered in it testify to a short period of functioning of this cult complex and its deliberate ritual destruction by the participants of the ceremony, which further emphasizes the similarity of the Don monument to the Kazakhstan ones. Thus, the archaeological finds give one more argument in favour of religious and cultural affinity of the Polovtsy of Eastern European steppes and the Asian Kypchaks ethnically kindred to them.
