The discussion about the problems of studying primitive art on the pages of our journal does not have a pronounced polemical character, although it is unlikely that researchers have such similar views on this phenomenon of culture or agree with all the provisions expressed during the discussion. Authors of articles presented in this journal category usually consider their own new archaeological materials, formally linking them to the context of the discussion and touching only on certain aspects of the problems proposed for discussion. The opportunity provided by the editorial staff allows you to address the most controversial stories and the most polemical speeches. This is what I see in the content of E.'s work. Jacobson's "On the informative value of petroglyphic and funerary monuments of the Bronze Age", published in the journal two years before the discussion [2002], especially since the main postulates of the author's methodology were re-submitted for discussion in an article written jointly with A.-P. Frankfort and together with the speech of Ya. A. Sher, which opened the discussion [Frankfort, Yakobson, 2004]. In a 2002 publication, an American art critic based on extensive material obtained during the work of the Russian-American-Mongolian expedition, conducted as part of the international project for the study of petroglyphs of the Mongolian Altai, raised the question of interpreting the content contained in the subjects and images of rock art of the Mongolian Altai of the Bronze Age. Along with the generally accepted approaches to the study of rock art monuments based on the methodology of archaeological research, E. Yakobson offers her analysis of Bronze Age petroglyphs, which, in her opinion, corresponds to the desire to take into account the context of images carved and engraved on the rocks of the Mongolian Altai as fully as possible [2002, p.32]. The researcher rightly notes the objective difficulties of identifying cultural and chronological layers ... Read more