MAPPING MEANING ONTO STONE: LANDSCAPE, TOPONYMIC, AND STYLISTIC DIVERSITY IN THE ROCK ART OF UZBEKISTAN

This article examines the rock art of Uzbekistan as a complex semiotic and cultural system, focusing on the interaction between landscape, toponymy, and stylistic representation. Departing from purely descriptive approaches, the study emphasizes theoretical and methodological perspectives derived from cognitive semiotics, linguoculturology, and cultural geography. The research argues that rock art functions as a multimodal communicative system in which meaning is constructed through the integration of visual signs, spatial organization, and linguistic markers. The findings suggest that rock art sites represent not only artistic practices but also cognitive mapping of cultural space and collective memory. The study contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship by advancing a theoretically grounded framework for analyzing visual-linguistic interactions in archaeological contexts.