The paper features empirical studies of various technologies of psychological and pedagogic support of fatherhood readiness in adolescences and adults. It also focuses on constructive strategies of fatherhood in adults. The study involved 179 participants including 40 adolescents, whose mean age in the beginning of the study was 16,5 and for the control group – 16,4; and 139 adult males who were also divided into experimental group (mean age=32) and control group (mean age=33). The statistic analysis of the data included descriptive statistic, T-test and dispersion analysis. The results helped to assess the effects of described technologies. The results will be interesting for family consultants and gender researchers.

According to the system approach, a person is considered as a multidimensional self-developing system, while identity is a reflection in the personality consciousness of its individual "dimensions". Being an element of self-consciousness, individual identities, in turn, are organized into a system reflecting the holistic view of the personality about itself, i.e. Me-concept. Professional activity is one of the most important areas of life. At the level of self-awareness, the attitude towards one’s profession and oneself as a professional is reflected in professional identity. Professional identity begins to form at the stage of vocational education and is often maintained even after retirement. Any significant contradictions that arise during the professionalization are reflected in one’s identity. The research features the changes that arise in the system of identity of the individual in the process of its professional burnout. The results of the empirical study of professional burnout of doctors substantiate the changes in the properties of the identity system, expressed in the increase of diffuse and predetermined identity. It also affects its structure and reduces the importance of professional, communicative and reflexive identity, as well as the structural deformation of the professional identity. The work with self-consciousness and identity is an important component of prevention and correction of professional burnout.

The article provides an analysis of various studies conducted in the sphere of Yakut mentality within the framework of psychology and related sciences. The history of the study of Yakut mentality is divided into three periods, i.e. pre-revolutionary, Soviet, and Russian, which demonstrate a strong historical continuity. The first pre-revolutionary studies of Yakut mentality were purely ethnographic and benefited from numerous political exiles. The ethnographic essays of that period featured the structure and characteristics of the Yakut family and the attitude to the surrounding social and natural world, as well as spiritual and moral values. During the Soviet period, sociological studies of migration processes and interethnic perception became more relevant. Pre-revolutionary and soviet studies became the basis for further research in philosophy, pedagogy, and psychology after the collapse of the USSR. Modern studies revealed a change in Yakut mentality under the impact of historical and social events. In spite of these changes, the following features of traditional Yakut mentality have survived: respect for nature, an expanded understanding of the family concept, gender-role features, and inter-ethnic tolerance. However, the ethnic identity of the Chukchi, the Evens and the Evenks has changed.

The research features social anxiety in people with such affective disorders as internal tension triggered by social and interpersonal communication. The test group involved 28 individuals with various affective disorders. The control group consisted of 28 respondents without affective personality disorder or depressive symptoms. Psychological diagnostics presupposed specific methods for each selected criterion of social anxiety: 1) negative beliefs about social interaction; 2) increased physiological excitability; 3) desire to avoid social situations; fear in distress; 4) deficit of social skills. The study made it possible to describe the features of the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral background of persons with affective disorders: hyperbolization of life difficulties; avoiding stressful situations; deficiency of adaptive defense mechanisms and energy resources to overcome frustration. The study also revealed a defect in the natural self-regulation of the psychoemotional state of social situations in persons with affective disorders. The results obtained are valuable for understanding the possibilities of psychological correction, aimed at reducing the intensity of negative experiences associated with social anxiety.

The present research featured a theoretical analysis of the concept "mental health" within the framework of the system and level approach. The paper focuses on factors and conditions of mental health, as well as on the effect of sociocultural factors on emotional problems and deviations in the behavior of primary schoolers. The experiment involved 131 primary schoolers (girls – 48,1 %; mean age=10,2): 53 pupils of a grammar school, 54 pupils of a comprehensive school, and 24 pupils of a rural school. The research included their relationships with parents, mental health, and social living conditions. The children from the grammar school demonstrated more pronounced behavioral and communicative problems. The children from the rural school had a more distinct pro-social orientation of behavior. Male sex appeared to be a risk factor of mental health deviations. Urban children demonstrated more difficult relations with peers, as well as internality and externality or problems. Good relations with parents acted as a nonspecific factor of mental health protection. The obtained data have a certain value for prevention of mental development deviations in primary schoolers.

The article contains the results of an empirical study of the relationship between the aspects of the value-motivational sphere and job satisfaction in medical workers. The study was conducted on the basis of the Vladivostok Clinical and Diagnostic Center. The research revealed some factors of value-motivational sphere of personality that affect job satisfaction. Using this model of correlation, the authors describe the systems of relations between values, motivations, and job satisfaction. The paper also describes the leading role of the values of achievements and power that are reflected in the motivational sphere and job satisfaction. They, in turn, also form a self-sustaining system in the personality structure of employees. The article also features a psychological portrait of the average employee of the All-Russian Exhibition and Convention Center (generalized respondent). The results of the research are of both theoretical and applied significance. The obtained knowledge can be used to create a system of staff motivation, in the selection of personnel, as well as to create a more favorable socio-psychological climate and improve the efficiency of employees.

The paper features the structure and dynamics of professional value formation in cadets of the institution of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia. The study was based on the author's questionnaire "Diagnostics of professional and valuable orientations of the personality" that tests one’s internalization and the content of professional value orientations. It was a longitudinal statistical psychodiagnostics of 180 future employees of various penitentiary organizations. The research demonstrated the dynamics of qualitative changes of professional value orientations. At the initial stage of vocational education, relations, specific knowledge and a need for achievement appeared to be the most important characteristics of the official professional activity. For the third-year cadets, these characteristics included personal qualities necessary for professional performance. Senior students gave preference to personal and professional qualities and skills. The results can be used in educational and social work of military institutions and counseling.

The article features basic violations and absence of “mental model” as an ability to identify with another person’s actions in the process of imitation. 124 preschoolers were studied to compare the development of mental model and imitation. They were divided into three contrasting groups: normally developing children, children with special needs, and children with delayed speech development. The study revealed imitation differences in relation to the level of the mental model. The obtained data complement the understanding of the innate foundations of social cognition. Violations associated with imitation can explain the cognitive aspects of the mental development deficit in preschool children. They can be a universal symptom that disrupts early social interaction and ultimately leads to various social and communication deficits. For a productive implementation of simulation schemes, it is necessary to understand and recognize the mental states of the interlocutor and their organization into mental models (single, situational, or extra-narrative). Imitation arises when the children are able to integrate information about themselves and about others and can combine their own intentions and the intentions of others in relation to an external object (triadic relations).

The research identifies the relationship between satisfaction with the way of life and various socio-psychological factors. The study involved 1–5-year male cadets of a military university (N=255, average age = 20,2 years). To identify factors that influence cadets' satisfaction with their lifestyle, the authors used proprietary techniques, a questionnaire for diagnosing the level of social frustration by L. I. Wasserman modified by V. V. Boiko, and the methodology of the study of value orientations by M. Rokich. The study showed the dependence of the factors determining the cadets' satisfaction with the way of life on the year of study. For junior students, it was the military team factors and the place of the individual in the team. For graduates, the most significant factors were those that emphasized their belonging to the military community. The most significant predictors of lifestyle satisfaction were the characteristics of a subjective assessment of one’s status in a military team, a positive assessment of professional choice, and conditions of service and prospects after graduation.

The paper describes the structural and procedural picture of the unity of the non-equilibrium state of the individual and a borderline situation. The subject of the study was limited to the situation of loss, for which it was necessary to identify possible scenarios and systematize psychological indicators. The study employed an integrative analysis and synthesis of theoretical and applied works in the fields of personality psychology, crisis and clinical psychology, psychotherapy, and psychological counseling. The unity of one’s state and situation appeared to provide the psychological links of the event, one’s personal predispositions, interpretations, experience, and behavior. The situation unfolds in the external and internal (mental state) reality, which do not coincide. An essential role in correlating of information about the state of the internal and the external and the emergence of a particular state belongs to the psychological boundaries of the individual. The situation of loss reflects the disintegration of one’s internal and external realities and the psychological impasse: the time-space "in between" the previous ego, the future ego and the present ego, which is partially destroyed. The uncontrolled value-semantic "hanging" correlates with the critical non-equilibrium state of a person. The content markers of their unity are confusion, ambivalence, "breakdown" of the ego boundaries, temporal effects, semantic disregulation, disintegration, alienation, and a burnout. Intolerance to ambivalence of a situation means getting into a border situation. The possibility of a constructive or destructive way out of this situation is indicated by affective expansion or semantic dysregulation and disintegration of the personality. Leaving a borderline situation behind requires a change of the state, attitudes, values, and meanings by restoring the eroded or destroyed boundaries of the ego. For this purpose, the borders and the situation connected with them must acquire the status of a problem and a "place" of opportunity in one’s mind.

There is a large scatter of ideas about lacunae in modern linguistics. The lacuna phenomenon can be defined as a sign, a fixing principle of the presence / absence of an object or phenomenon; the phenomenon of absence in discourse, discursive omissions; differences, contradictions in the semantic sphere, revealed in communication, acts of misunderstanding; nonequivalent vocabulary, reality, white spots on the semantic map; zero correlate, dark holes; national specific differences between languages; virtual units, etc. If we assume that the lacuna is not a figment of imagination, but a unit that objectively exists in a language, it becomes obvious that it is impossible to mentally insert an infinite number of alien units into the language system. Thus, it would be wrong to identify the presence of lacunae in a language on this basis. The ideas of multi-level lacunarity are multiplying in works related to translation studies and intercultural communication. Particular attention should be given to grammatical lacunae, manifested in the linguistic gender. Feminine generic correlates of animated masculine names are productively analyzed as intralingual grammatical lacunae. The study of these forms in the paradigm of the theory of lacunarity makes it possible to focus on their pragmatic properties, since the systemic absence of linguistic units helps to clarify their linguistic-pragmatic characteristics. The following methods were used to study generic correlates as lacunae elimination. The method of privative oppositions was employed to study changing / unchangeable lexical units; the modeling method and the psycholinguistic method were used to study fragments of linguistic consciousness in native speakers and to detect the psychological component in the semantics of words. Based on the study of semantic-cognitive characteristics of language lacunae, their fundamental ambiguity and heterogeneity, it seems legitimate to isolate a specific area of the linguistic field called lacunology.

In modern cognitive linguistics, the controversial matters of the definition of invariant units in derivatology still remain relevant. The selection of such a unit as a word-formation category, despite the intensification of its study in recent decades, raises many questions. The most relevant of them are the following: the correlation of onomasiological and derivational categories, the reflection of concepts in derivational categories, the type of meaning, which the identification of derivational types is based on; the scope and typology of derivational categories, their possible hierarchy, and the interaction of derivational types within one category. This article features the above-mentioned key problems and the author’s point of view on the volume of the given emic unit. The author emphasizes the redundancy of bringing to the definition a wordformational category of such formal criteria as part of speech of the generating and derived fundamentals and the method of word-formation since they are not related to the functional analysis of language units. The empirical material is relevant, since Russian linguistics know no description of derivative adjective vocabulary, neither in synchronous nor in diachronic aspects. There is but one research based on Pskov dialects. The object of study is a new layer of the vocabulary analyzed as suggested by the author. This article presents a fragment of the description of the word-formative category of adjectivities with the value "attribute by action". A careful study of the material resulted in the following conclusions. In the same word-formation category, relations of additional or free distribution between single-function word-formation types are possible, depending on the grammatical qualities of the motivating verb (its type and derivativeness). This fact an explanatory effect on adjectives with this meaning in the language and predicts the appearance of new lexemes and other changes in wordbuilding categories. 

The article features Russian vocabulary from the aspect of identification linguistics, i.e. identification function on the morphological level, e.g. in various parts of speech and word forms belonging to different grammatical categories. The analysis focuses on auxiliary parts of speech, namely prepositions, related case forms, and grammatical meanings. The research is based on Internet correspondence. The article is included in the paradigm of research aimed at identifying and describing quantitative patterns in the distribution of units, properties, and relationships in texts and patterns of the stability / variability coefficient of units, properties, and relationships. The authors assume that different units have a different coefficient: some tend to be stable while others change their coefficient depending on different characteristics of the text. The research employed the method of Pearson’s statistical criterion. The applied method determines the frequency of lexemes in texts belonging to different author profiles and reveals their identification potential.

The article deals with the stylistic specificity of journal text of the second half of the XVIII century, published by N. I. Novikov. The author identifies linguistic and compositional features in the comparison with the modern style model of publicism. The author analysed the dominant features of the texts: dialogicality, educational function, and the synthesis of pedagogical and publicistic discourse. The study focuses on the stylistic uniqueness of the titles and emphasizes that the specificity of N. I. Novikov’s journalistic language was determined by his linguistic personality, as well as by the target settings of informing the reader. The research method included analyses of thematic, compositional, factual, and modal types of information content of the media text. A semantic and stylistic analysis of headlines made it possible to define the following types: plot, nominative-ascertaining, genre, spatial, precedent, and address headlines, which had an informative function and penetrating boundaries. Analysing the expressive resources of the texts, the author observed the specifics and typical use of Novikov’s idiostyle. The strengthening compositional element of the analysed texts is the image of a real individual author, implemented in various textual images and actualised in the context of the stylistic effect of dialogicality. The field of application of the research results includes stylistics and rhetoric.

The article features the phenomenon of electronic literary text. The research objective was to identify the structural and semantic features of electronic literary texts within the framework of post-structuralism. The electronic literary text resulted not only from the development of information technology: it is also the product of the development of philosophical and linguistics ideas of post-structuralism. The post-structuralism perspective was not repeated exactly on the technological level of the electronic text representation. However, the post-structuralist text theory was reflected in the electronic literary text structure, i.e. its rhizomatic, decentered, fragmentary, intertextual, and simulation character. In particular, the attempt to build cohesion of semiotically diverse components in the electronic environment reflects the post-structuralists idea of chaos and disorganization. The attempt to provide the navigation in this multi-component unity by the key-word hyperlinks reflects the idea of the total interconnectivity of all structural components, i.e. intertextuality. The phenomenon of intertextuality defines the culmination of decenterment and nomadism in the text theory. It is connected with the rhizomatic concept and hypertextuality. The research used electronic literary texts based on Adobe Flash and HTML. The research employed general scientific methods, such as monitoring and description, in conjunction with the method of comparative linguistic analysis. The author concludes that the text perception and electronic virtual world immersion become much more important than the artifacts in the electronic literature of XXI century. The electronic literary text became the poststructuralist concept of the new esthetic object, lost its integrity and composition stability, and opened itself to external input.

The article introduces readers to the problem of localization of English filmonyms as exemplified by a subgroup of film titles with a dialogic nature. The research features the phenomena of mass communication discursivity based on film titles with a dialogic nature in modern Russian film distribution. The method of typological synchronous comparison (juxtaposition) allowed the author to compare filmonyms and their translations in order to discover their functional peculiarities, similarities, and differences. The material shows that modern cinematography, unlike film industry abroad, makes an active use of dialogical filmonyms as a manipulative instrument of attracting filmgoers to cinema halls. The translation activates an adaptive tactics in order to accustom filmonyms to the peculiarities of the accepting cultural background. The classification revealed that a range of filmonyms with a dialogical nature, i. e. exclamations, stickers, appeals, declarations, and questions, reflect the mass conscience due to their emotivity. In the last decades, the shift in mass conscience signifies the tendency for tolerance to everything immodest, impudent, seductive, and blatant, which was previously uncharacteristic for the Russian film industry. The article postulates that learning a foreign language implies the ability to tune on the same wavelength with the foreign culture, whereas disrespect for the foreign cultural specifics doesn’t facilitate the cultural dialogue and mutual understanding.

The phenomenon of secondary text production has become a focal point due to the integrative nature of this speech product. The possibilities of the Internet greatly enhance the creation of derivative texts, thus expanding the formats of virtual communication. The formation of new genres, as well as the modification of existing ones, brings the problem of studying the mechanisms of text generation to a new level. This paper describes the Internet comment viewed as a secondary textual activity of the individual. An analysis of the network response, posted to online news content, has been conducted from the standpoint of linguopersonological and linguosemiotic approaches to the text construction. Importantly, the iconic and discursive patterns of the event have a significant impact on the reader’s commenting activity. This makes it possible to highlight the semiotic model of secondary text generation. The analysis of text representations of this model shows that the semiotic "view" on the text stimulus can be reflected in the comments at the explicit and implicit levels. The authors propose the typology of the semiotic model including five variants, i.e. metalinguistic, simulation, cross-language, transmutational, and intertextual. The variants can be allocated on the basis of different approaches to source text decoding. The complex nature of the phenomenon of Internet commentary, determined by its secondary character and new communicative environment, provides a comprehensive approach to the study of this type of text. In the future, the study can provide a description of cognitive, axiological, and pragmatic models of text production.

The abstracted article summarizes the author's observations concerning the use of the English demonstrative pronouns this and that. The author focuses on the contradiction between what is prescribed by the language system, and what is accepted by the language community. The contradiction mentioned reveals itself in the tendency of the pronoun that to accept the functions of its counterparts by the oppositions of this – that and it – this / that. The speculations of the author are grounded by the theory of oppositional reduction, the fundamentals of which are shortly described after a brief review of literature devoted to the study of demonstrative pronouns. Next, the author passes to the description of the research procedure, which includes statistical, experimental and analytical components. The author's tools also involve elements of comparative analysis of English and Russian demonstrative pronouns, which was ultimately necessary for the implementation of the didactic task. The author's reasoning is accompanied by text illustrations, from which it follows that the main condition contributing to the reduction of the opposition by proximity is anaphoric reference, which is most often accompanied by the stressed position of the pronoun. In conclusion, the author notes the tendency of the pronoun that to secure the status of a universal demonstrative, capable of representing both this and it. This circumstance constitutes one of the specific features of the English demonstrative pronouns in relation to Russian ones, which, in turn, creates additional problems for Russian learners of English.

The research features an analysis of the headlines of economic articles published in German periodicals after the global economic crisis. The paper gives a theoretical basis of the conceptual nature of headlines and characterizes the phenomenon as a textual linguacultural concept. The subject of the present research is verbal representations of the concept "economic headline" to be found in German economic media discourse. The paper focuses on the description of the process of headline cognition that the recipient performs by interpreting the foreknowledge inherent to a headline. The analysis revealed different cognitive strategies of text producers and the variation in the verbal content of headlines. All the headings of economic articles published in German periodicals actualize the concept of "economic heading". The frequent inclusion of headline complex elements into the process of text cognition is typical for modern economic headlines. Their multilevel structure allows keeping the maximum information content as it provides the recipient with the necessary foreknowledge concerning the subject area of the article. This method accelerates the headline cognition process and results from the fact that the recipient has no time to read the whole article. The established norms of headline construction in German journalism reflect the cognition of economic reality in German linguaculture.

The issue of the research is connected with the fact that the scientific way of linguistic perception and interpretation is not the only one. There are many other ways, including the interpretation of linguistic units in the esoteric tradition. Such interpretation differs significantly from the scientific one. However, this is precisely what makes it interesting. It offers a different type of understanding, which, in the long term, is capable of enriching the concept of the unit, or at least elaborating the generally accepted concepts. Hence, the research topic was the identification and description of the structure and functions of the Masonic perception of the word. From the pragmatic side of an important language category, it provides a tool not only for its in-depth perception, but also for correcting the ideas about its usage. Scientific novelty manifests itself in the discovery of verifiable characteristics of the unit, which together create a holistic view of the functioning of the communicative phenomenon. The research objective was to identify the semantic content and functional attribution of the communicative unit in the form in which it has been perceived and used by national and foreign Masons for three hundred years. The research employed semantic, communicative, and functional analyses. Specific cases of word usage were subjected to these types of analysis and were grouped according to the prevailing component of meaning or functional orientation. The Masonic typology of the word was revealed to include a number of interrelated units that perform various functions.

The paper features the problems of traceological analysis of ancient artifacts made from animal bones. The exceptional importance of bone objects as an archaeological source cannot be overestimated. The authors studied Russian and foreign scientific literature and summarized their own experience of trace examination of bone artifacts from Bronze Age monuments of the forest-steppe Altai. The paper describes some methodological problems that arise during trace examination of archaeological bone collections. It studies the material, technological, functional, and taxonomic features of macro- and micro-surfaces of bone artifacts that make the examination different from analysis of stone artifacts and have to be taken into account. The leading factor is the raw material features of the bone. They cause an accelerated process of formation and destruction of traces on the surface of tools and products, the possibility of using bone material in various physical states, as well as the presence of deformations and traces of a natural (biological) nature. The authors challenge the thesis that the method applied to trace examination of stone objects can be transferred to bone tools and products. They declare that bone artifacts require specialized methods and techniques.

The evacuation of industrial enterprises, educational institutions, and millions of Soviet citizens during the Great Patriotic War is a tragic page in the history of Russia. This complex operation involved the evacuation and placement of hundreds of schools and factory training institutions in the rear areas of the country. The article describes the scale and complexity of the restoration of the work of educational institutions of Labor Reserves in the conditions of Western Siberia at the initial stage of the war. It includes an analysis of the restructuring process of Labor Reserve schools. The author evaluates the importance of mobilization measures taken to attract young people to accelerated vocational training. The paper also features the problem of the relationship between the management of the Labor Re-serves and the industrial and transport enterprises where students had to do practical training and got employed after graduation. The research offers a comparative statistics of growth in the number of educational institutions and stu-dents.

The paper features the policy of the royal government of Russia towards ethnic regions. There are different views on these regions in modern historiography. The ambiguous situation is primarily due to the fact that progressive single-nation states and ethnic regions were studied without taking into account the general historical situation. The present research was based on the assumption that multi-ethnic countries have a great development potential. From the XVI century on, the authorities were aware of the ethnic differences between the Russians and the population of the new territories. However, they did not perceive ethnicity as the main social marker. The social criteria chosen by the authorities included religion, class, and place of residence, i. e. they were of supranational character. The author believes that the heterogeneous policy of Tsarist Russia towards ethnic provinces, lacking as it was, ensured the viability of the state and contributed to the gradual integration of various ethnicities.

The paper features the development of agricultural technology at all stages of the annual agricultural cycle as a factor that led to the formation of medieval cities of Kazakhstan. According to archaeological sources, the population of the area under study experienced an agrarian revolution from the middle of the first Millennium BC to the end of the first Millennium AD. The agrarian revolution was associated with the transition to hoe and then to arable farming. It largely determined the nature of socio-economic processes in the region. The progressive development of agricultural technology led to a significant increase in productivity, including the stages of cultivation, processing, and storage. Irrigated agriculture was the basis of crop, vegetable, and fruit farming, as well as viticulture. Cultivation on non-irrigated lands was possible only on some foothills with sufficient rainfall. Productivity growth in the agricultural sector had some economic and social consequences. In the economic sphere, an increase in acreage and volume of grain production helped to feed the growing urban population. In social terms, this fact had a positive effect on the number and density of the population, as well as on the consolidation of settlements. As a result, people concentrated in large settlements, which gradually turned into small, medium, and large cities with a new social structure and new economic ties.

The research featured the economic policy in the sphere of forest exploitation led by St. Petersburg government in the Baltic region. The paper describes the policy and reveals the mechanisms of its elaboration and change. The study is based on the fundamental principles of historical research, such as historicism and consistency. The basic ideas involve multifactority of historical process, problematic and chronological principals of the narrative, as well as the instrumental and technological approach to the theory of modernization. When Peter the Great’s set up the Russian Navy, it stimulated the development of trade and mobilized all kinds of recourses, including timber logging. The dilemma "trade development vs. rational recourse usage" from the very beginning became an acute problem of state policy and remained urgent for many decades to follow. Forest exploitation in the Baltic region in the XVIII century was the zone of various conflicts: private interests vs. those of the state, local businessmen vs. Russians, traditional technologies vs. modernization, Admiralty vs. Commerce-College, local administration vs. central power, etc. The research focuses on the dynamics of economic policy and social communication with the power. The study is based on a number of published and archival sources. The mainstreams of the process were: complains about overuse of forests; revisions that followed the complains; limitations and bans of export, as well as confiscations; merchants’ complains about personal bankrupts and general trade-fall. Throughout the whole century, these activities determined the general situation in the Baltic region, thus keeping the problem of resource saving in the focus of the attention of the central government, which had to edit new local and imperial laws. This stability was especially remarkable in the circumstances of constant palace coups that were often followed by policy-course changes. The research increases the historiography experience of economic policy studies. The Baltic region, which had strong contacts with the western culture, was one of the leading ones in Russia. There the processes of modernization were faster and easier adapted, if compared with other regions; they sometimes even stimulated the central government for further improvements. The main factors that determine the development of the policy included: active communication between the central power and the local society, which was bound with strong corporative relations; modernization processes, displayed in the consolidation of central power and state hierarchy, regulatory activity, bureaucratization, development of goods / money relations, and the development of modern technologies.

The paper features the problem of identification of natural-historical shrines in the case of petroglyphs of Mount TuruAlty in Kosh-Agachsk district of the Altai Republic. Currently, all rock art sites in Southern Siberia are considered in scientific literature as rock art monuments. The authors studied the Mount Turu-Alty, the location of the petroglyphs, and other archaeological monuments in the neighborhood. As a result, they offer a different scientific interpretation of the monument as a natural-historical shrine. On the mountain top there is a rocky platform with a vertically standing large stone that faces the south and is completely covered with images. In the vicinity, there are several stone mounds. The mountain top is clearly visible from the foot on the sides of the southern slope. From this center, there are two ridges of large stones extending down to the right and left: they go round the terrace-like platforms of the steep southern slope. This natural formation has the shape of an amphitheater. On its top, there is an altar-like large stone. Standing at the foot of the southern slope, one cannot but feel the sacredness of this natural formation. On the large boulders that frame the southern slope, there are grouped and single etchings of animals. The field studies revealed images on 271 stones; 97 of the images are grouped, most are thematic. According to the plots, most of the images refer to the first millennium BC and the first half of first millennium AD. At the beginning of the first millennium BC, in the early Saka period, Mount Turu-Alty obviously acquired a special sacred status and began to function as a natural-historical shrine. The "altar" stone played a special role in this geological composition. It stands vertically on the top of the mountain, and its southern side is covered with 101 images of stylized deer, sheep, and goats. The stone is the main symbol of Turu-Alty. In the center, there are two large figures of deer flying to the east. All the other silhouettes are much smaller; all but one face the east. The animals are subject to eastward movement towards the sun. The authors consider the Turu-Alty complex as a natural-historical shrine from the period of the first millennium BC – first millennium AD.

The paper features the historiography and scientific sources on the traditional housing development of Khakass and Russian long-term residents of the Khakass-Minusinsk region in XVIII–XXI centuries. The research analyzed and summarized the pre-revolutionary, Soviet, and Post-Soviet material on the research topic. The analysis revealed that the traditional housing development of the Khakass-Minusinsk residents remains understudied. Scientists made certain attempts to generalize the available material and systematize, characterize, and chronologically organize the known types of Khakass dwellings. However, some issues on the genesis of the certain types of dwelings of both indigenous and foreign population of the KhakassMinusinsk region still remain understudied. There are no comprehensive works that trace all the stages, levels, and nature of multicultural interaction in the manor-housing culture of these groups of population. Ethnographers still have no generally accepted point of view whether the Siberian classifications can be applied to the Khakass dwellings. The scientific sources, however chaotic, make it possible to trace the development of the dwellings in the Khakass-Minusinsk region and provide the research of the complicated processes of the housing genesis in the XVIII–XXI centuries during cultural interaction.

The foothills of the North-Western Kuznetsky Alatau are considered as the copper-ore base of the Tagar archaeological culture. The paper introduced some published data on copper deposits on the banks of the river Kia and the bordering area of the Kuznetsky Alatau. Map-marking revealed the geographical the connection between the Koghuh tectonic area, the Central-Martaiga structure-formaton area, and the Tagar archaeological sites. The research registered the known settlements on the Kemerovo region territory with signs of the bronze industry (copper-bronze artifacts, tools for ore crushing, slag) related to Tagar and transitional Tagar-Tashtik Epoch. The peculiarities of such sites demonstrated the localization of the bronze industry process in the some fortified and stable settlements. The comparison of geochemical admixtures revealed the differences of copper-ore origin at the developed stage of Tagar culture and the transitional Tagar-Tashtik stage. This can be explained by the difference in geography of the sites as related to the copper deposits of North-Western, Northern, and North-Eastern Kuznetsky Alatau foothills. The authors believe that the banks of the Kia and its left tributaries, the Koghuh and the Kundat, can reveal some ancient copper mining archaeological sites in the future.

The paper features studies of ancient hillforts of the 1st millennium AD located in the forest-steppe of the Altai region. The research history can be divided into two stages. The first stage (late XIX – 1980s) focused on the accumulation and interpretation of materials. The second stage (1980s – to date) initiated a focused study of the monuments. Initially, the studies of the hillforts were connected with such local lore researchers as M. D. Kopytov and B. Kh. Kadikov, who were followed by archaeologists Y. F. Kiryushin, M. T. Abdulganeev, A. L. Kungurov, and A. A. Kazakov. An analysis of scientific literature revealed that 40 ancient settlements sites have been discovered and examined since the late XIX century. 11 of them were studied archaeologically. The obtained materials did not fit into the existing historical and cultural paradigm. The situation began to change in the 1980s whith the attempts to determine the relative chronology of the settlements and their cultural affiliation. As a result, two different cultural and chronological schemes were formed. The first one was based on funerary monuments and did not take into account their relationship with settlement complexes. The second approach included the materials on hillfort studies. The paper also focuses on the debatable question about the functional purpose of the ditch – shaft line. Further studies of the sites will make it possible to identify the economic and cultural characteristics of the population of the Altai forest-steppe in the 1st millennium AD.

The paper features rock art images of Kremennaya mountain, which is situated in the North-West part of Tepsey archeological microdistrict. The images were discovered by Kemerovo archeologists in 2015. The opening of the petroglyph site replenished the collection of graphic sources of one of the largest rock art sites of the Minusinsk Basin. It also revealed a completely new graphic tradition of the late Bronze Age. In total, four surfaces covered with rock carvings were found, i.e. 52 distinct figures. They are presumably related to the Karasuk and Tagar cultures. According to the stylistic characteristics of Bronze Age, at least two art traditions were distinguished in the context of Karasuk culture: "Wire" figures and "full-weight" silhouette characters). Similar images were found in other site of the Tepsey mountains. Excavations performed in the 1960s revealed that Tepsey archaeological microdistrict has both burial and settlement sites of two chronological stages of the Karasuk culture (XIII to XI centuries, BC). The images of Kremennaya mount provide a more detailed understanding of Tepsey, which is one of the largest rock art sites of Minusinsk basin.