This thesis reconstructs the cult of a deer in the society of the ancient hunters of Europe and Northern Asia. The author has applied an interdisciplinary approach that combines informative and interpretative possibilities of different sciences (archeology, ethnography, religious studies, linguistics). This model was created on a wide range of ethnographic materials and by comparing of the historical method and the remnants of the deer cult. Archaeological sources were analyzed, systematized and compared with the synchronic and diaсhronic aspects and imposed upon the ethnographic model. Thus we have historically reconstructed deer cult in the ancient hunting societies; as well as traced it's development in the later societies. Model of the cult, created by the author on the basis of ethnographic materials, is a mythos-ritual complex, it is focused on the deer. The object of worship is a sacred deer, its incarnation - a female deity, Deer-Mother and zooantropomorfical ancestor and cultural hero. The subject of the cult were individuals and social groups. Their belonging to the cult was identified by the signs of a deer. By its contents the cult was totemic. The rites - related to natural and economic cycles, and the ones associated with the life cycle of people, were the form of worship. The rites were an essential component of the cult, inextricably linked to the verbal element, that is, myths - totemistic and cosmological. Model of the deer cult was compared with the archaeological sources of the synchronic and diachronic aspects. Thus its genesis and evolution were reconstructed. The first archaeological manifestations of a deer worshiping are dated back to the late Paleolithic time. The accumulation of the deer antlers in the caves of Western Europe and the Urals, the repeated images of the deer in a monumental and portable art of the Franco-Cantabrian area, the presence of the paired images and antropozoomorfic characters, indicates the formation of the main elements of the cult - the totemic myth and ritual reproduction of the deer. The archeological materials and the rock art of the Mesolithic time suggested that the developed cult of the deer had the leading role in the mythos-ritual complex. The rock and portable art of Northern Eurasia reflects the mythological notions of a female deer / moose, as the Great Mother. The stone art of the Iberian Peninsula present us with the totemistic myths and reproductive rituals. Archaeological materials include deer frontlets of Western Europe - the evidence of the hunting rites, and antlers found on the burial grounds of Western Europe; and elk-head rods used in the burials in Northern Eurasia, were attributes of the transition rites during which people with the higher status ( or shamans) would receive a sign of the totemic animal: Looking at the stone and portable art of Northern Eurasia during the Neolithic period, the image of a deer/elk becomes dominant in the mythos-ritual complex of the ancient societies of that region. The image of an Elk - the Mother, is in the center of the Universe. The rock art is reflecting the rites of reproduction, as well as the totemic cosmological and mythological subjects. The images of the elk-headed boats indicate the idea of the deer/elk as a mediator. The archaeological materials of Northern Eurasia point to the existence of the sacrificial rites of a deer /elk, which resulted in the multilayered sanctuaries of Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age. The remains of the sacrificial deer, found at the archaeological sites of the Neolithic - Bronze Age in Central Europe indicate, that the elements of the cult of the deer continue to exist while transitioning to a producing agriculture - deer becomes the patron of fertility. Burials of the people with the deer support the idea of a deer being a mediator between the worlds. Thus, the cult of the deer, which originated in the societies of hunters in the final Paleolithic Europe, in Mesolithic and Neolithic time has become dominant in mythos-ritual complex of the people of Europe and North Asia. Its ideological significance was so great, that the remnants of the cult of the deer were preserved in the ideology of many nations in the following eras. Key words: stone age archaeology, spiritual culture, Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, rock art.
