Ekaterina Kashina

The article is devoted to regional, chronological and functional and semantic features of the bird image in rock art and the minor arts of the Neolithic–Eneolithic within the forest zone of Eastern Europe. The differences between the functions of the image in monumental and mobile art are related to the fact that petroglyphs refl ect collective and group function of the image, whereas minor art forms correlate with the familial and personal. The iconography of the bird image in petroglyphs and the minor art forms testifi es to the existence of a series of canonic images which seldom echo each other. The image of waterfowl played a special role in both rock and mobile art. The bird image in mobile Eneolithic art was also connected with sex-age and, possibly, social factors.