V. I. Molodin, N. S. Efremova, Institute of Archeology and Ethnography SB RAS Akademika Lavrentieva Ave 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia E-mail: bronza@dus.nsc.ru Efremova@archaelolgy.nsc.ru UDC 903.2 100th anniversary of the academician Alexey Pavlovich Okladnikov dedicated to ...The historical process has its own regularities, continuity and continuity of traditions for thousands of years. In the present, there are always elements of the past and the future. A. P. Okladnikov [1967, p. 58] Introduction One of the main tasks of archaeological research is to reconstruct, on the basis of objects of material culture, the complex of ideas that a person of a bygone era was guided by in everyday and spiritual life. This complex largely determined the design of the identity of the ethnic group as a whole, formed specific features of the community. An irreplaceable source that allows you to recreate the worldview of people of the past is a monument that combines traces of material and spiritual culture - a place of worship-an altar under rock carvings. This type of historical source, introduced by O. N. Bader in the mid-20th century [1954], is recorded in many regions of Russia [Okladnikov, 1955, pp. 100-104; Savvateev, 1970; Kochmar, 1994; Mazin, 1994; Tivanenko, 1989, 1994; et al.]. For the territory of Gorny Altai, an altar sanctuary is a rarity. In the literature, artefacts have been found at the foot of petroglyphs (see, for example, Frolov and Speransky, 1967; Tskhai, 1989). 1) was discovered in 1939 by V. I. Shemelev [1, 1947, p. 30], the first study of petroglyphs on it was carried out by E. P. Matochkin [Matochkin, 1988]. The sanctuary, also known as the Kuylyu Grotto, is located in the Ust-Koksinsky district of the Altai Republic. It differs in the thickness of the cultural layers in which numerous finds have been found; this puts it among the unique ones. Archaeologically, this monument has been fully studied (Fig. 2); some aspects of the study are covered in a nu ... Read more