THE ‘PATH OF THE SPIRITS’: A PRELIMINARY APPROACH TO NORTH-WEST/SOUTH-EAST ORIENTED ROWS OF CAIRNS IN THE ALTAI MOUNTAINS, MONGOLIA

Abstract

This paper explores the potential significance, in archaeological, archaeoastronomical, and symbolic terms,

of a NW/SE oriented row of 54 stone cairns, locally known as ‘the path of the spirits’. The row of 54 cairns,

which is apparently oriented towards the setting of the sun at the summer solstice, also displays a suggestive

spatial proximity to an outstanding Late Bronze Age funerary complex. The row of cairns, which has been

originally documented in the arid high mountain landscape of the Ikh Bogd Uul Mountain, Eastern

Mongolian Altai, does not seem to feature in the archaeological literature of Mongolia. Nevertheless, both

these characteristics, namely a NW/SE orientation and a spatial proximity to a Late prehistoric funerary

mound, can be also observed in a row of 9 stone cairns documented in the satellite imagery a few kilometres

away, on the southern slope of the Ikh Bogd Uul Mountain. In this paper, besides the description of such

archaeological features, the hypothesis that the articulation of rows of cairns with a powerful orientation and

numerical symbolism could be rooted in ancient and traditional Eurasian cosmologies and could play an

important role in the local sacred and funerary geographies is discussed.