Classical Olbia and the Scythian World: From the Sixth Century BC to the Second Century AD

212 Pages·2008·6.66 MB·English

by  David Braund

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Foreword
This volume collects the work of scholars in the UK and Ukraine who are
concerned with the ancient history and archaeology of the north coast of
the Black Sea, embracing both the Scythian and the classical worlds. In
the Ukraine this has been a subject of high priority for some two cen-
turies of intensive research and excavation.A whole wealth of issues and
data has been uncovered and studied—on ‘Great Scythia’, on the Late
Scythian peoples of the lower Dnieper region and Crimea, and also on
the Sarmatians and others besides. Major strides have been taken in the
advance of our knowledge of the classical cities of the region, such as
Tyras, Chersonesus, Kerkinitis, Kalos Limen, and the Bosporan cities,
among others.In all this work pride of place has been held by Olbia,not
only the city itself but also its civic territory and the island of Berezan,
which was in antiquity a peninsula. The study of Olbia has always been
set apart through the outstanding results of its excavations and the splen-
dour of individual finds there. Unfortunately, for the most part, the
English-speaking reader has been denied systematic contact with this
work for a series of reasons, not least the language barrier, since discov-
eries were published in Russian and Ukrainian.The present volume offers
the opportunity to engage with some of the most pressing current issues
in this field.
P.P.TOLOCHKO
Director of the Institute of Archaeology,
National Academy of Sciences,
Kiev,Ukraine
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Introduction
DAVID BRAUND
THE ORIGINS OF THIS BOOK lie in a snowy Ukraine, where the British
Academy supported a small conference in November 2001 in collaboration
withtheInstituteofArchaeologyoftheNationalAcademyoftheUkraine.
PaperswerereadbyUkrainianandBritishcolleaguesinKiev,withamem-
orable expedition to Poltava and the remarkable site of Bel’sk. However,
while the authors of the chapters in this book were among those who
participatedintheconference,thechaptersthemselveshavecomealongway
indeed since the meeting itself. In particular, whereas the conference
embracedawiderangeoftopicsandthemesfromantiquity,thisbookhasa
sharpfocusontheinteractionofthecityofOlbiaandthepopulationaround
it, conveniently and conventionally included within the general term
‘Scythians’. However, while the theme and geographical scope have nar-
rowed,thechronologicalframeworkremainsexpansive,fromtheemergence
of Olbiac.600BCtoitslocalsituationundertheearlyRomanempire.
As is usual,in history and archaeology,there is much about Olbia and
its relations with its neighbours which remains controversial.The editors
have made no attempt to iron out or expunge differences of interpreta-
tion, either between chapters within the book or between these chapters
and other accounts and views to be found elsewhere.On the contrary,the
more controversial matters are flagged within the book and/or brought
out more explicitly here.
The most significant divergences concern the literary and archaeolog-
ical sources. As for the interpretation of archaeological data, handmade
pottery and dwelling-type have for some time been a principal bone of
contention. While some have sought to make large inferences from this
material (especially about the ethnicity of those who produced the
pottery or inhabited the dwellings), others have stressed the importance
of the fact that settlers had to adapt to and cope with a challenging
new environment. Berezan—which is now an island, but was in antiq-
uity almost certainly a peninsula—has become a specific focus for this
Proceedings ofthe British Academy142,1–6.© The British Academy 2007.
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2 David Braund
particular debate. Meanwhile, as for the literary material, Herodotus
stands out, not only as relatively early and substantial, but also as the
subject of a particularly diverse set of interpretations. At its most
extreme, while some scholars have taken his statements on the region to
be uncomplicated fact,others have insisted that he did not go there at all
and/or that his account of the region is more or less fictional.More often,
scholars concerned with Olbia look hard for some kind of middle ground,
where, for example, text and archaeology can be set beside each other.
Here too, however, the pursuit of ‘reality’ has tended to bring its own
problems of method: we are left to plump for our own notions of what
sort of reality (indeed,whosereality) is envisaged.
These central issues dominate the early chapters of this book. In the
first of his two chapters, S. D. Kryzhitskiy sets out in broad terms the
progress of archaeology at Olbia, as one generation of scholars pursued
theirownworkandthenpassedthebatontotheirsuccessors,oftentheir
students. This sketch is of particular value in charting the main direc-
tions of the work at a site which has produced a wealth of data which
can bewilder by its sheer quantity, diversity, and, at times, difficulty of
access. In that spirit, it may also be read as a prelude to the compen-
dious volume recently published in a very small print run by the current
team of archaeologists at the site.1 Rather by contrast, in his second
chapter, Kryzhitskiy moves from his account of steady progress to
address key points of dispute, tackling head on the knotty central issue
of criteria. If we wish to identify non-Greeks in early Olbia, what kind
of criteria could we use, he asks. More concretely, what kind of criteria
have been brought to bear? Are they valid? Here Kryzhitskiy’s perspec-
tive contrasts sharply with the arguments of K. K. Marchenko and oth-
ers, who have sought to implement criteria which he finds misleading or
unhelpful.
While Kryzhitskiy centres his considerations upon Olbia itself, S. B.
Buyskikh pursues a related line of argument with regard to a substantial
portion of Olbia’s environs, considering Greek and non-Greek interac-
tions on the lower Bug. Here he is especially concerned with the issue as
part of the larger discussion on colonial settlement and the nature of
dealings between Greek settlers and others. He pays particular attention
to handmade pottery and dwelling-type,which—as Kryzhitskiy discusses
at Olbia—have been taken to be clear signs of non-Greek presence. His
1 Kryzhitskiy et al.1999,in Russian.Note also Vinogradov & Kryzhitskiy 1995,now a little out
ofdate.See also Kryzhitskiy 2005.
Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved
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INTRODUCTION 3
specific concern is a recent account and interpretation of the archaeology
of Berezan, which he takes to present a wholly misguided conception of
a site which was clearly fundamental to the beginnings of Olbia and was
probably the Olbiopolitans’emporionas mentioned by Herodotus.2In the
light of the arguments of Kryzhitskiy and Buyskikh, much more critical
attention will have to be given to the archaeological basis for claims about
our knowledge of non-Greek activity in early Olbia and its environs.
Herodotus’ Histories have as a whole been a topic of particularly
lively research and disputation in the past few decades. The next two
chapters in this book present, inter alia, two quite different conceptions
of Herodotus’account of Olbia and its environs, which may not be rec-
oncilable. For David Braund, Herodotus’ presentation of the region is
strikingly accurate within the norms of the geography and cultural inter-
actions of the later fifth century BC when the work was completed. He
stresses that Herodotus’account of the region (e.g. about its cults) coin-
cides with the evidence of archaeology and epigraphy. At the same time,
he finds nothing in Herodotus’ account which raises substantial doubts
about the quality of his information (wherever and however acquired) or
about whether he personally visited the region. After all, at around the
time when Herodotus saw Olbia,the city was probably already an ally of
the Athenians. Pericles himself had probably visited the city in the early
430s, some ten years before Herodotus completed his work.3 The lack of
any detailed account of the city of Olbia itself is, on Braund’s view,
entirely consonant with Herodotus’ larger concern in Book Four to
sketch Scythia,Scythians,and so-called ‘Scythians’against whom Darius
mounts an unwise campaign which will fail and show the way to the
Persian failure in Greece.
By contrast, Stephanie West finds much in Herodotus’ account to
raise suspicions, stressing the debt which Herodotus had to a literary
tradition which, in her view, he chooses to conceal. This is a deceitful
Herodotus, who may not have visited Olbia at all. If so, his claim to
have held discussions with Tymnes, a prominent Scythian administrator,
is a fiction, unless we suppose it to have taken place elsewhere. So too
hisotherdirectandindirectsuggestionsthathehadpersonalknowledge
of the region. Here we are close to a familiar debate about whether
2 The study in question is Solovyov 1999.On the identification ofthe emporion,see Braund and
West in this volume.
3 On Olbia and Athens,see Braund 2005.
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4 David Braund
Herodotusisinsomesensealiar.4Assheindicates,Westisledtobesus-
picious, at least in part, by her conviction that Herodotus’claims about
Egypt are false. And false they may be, whether deliberately or through
misapprehension, but even so we are left to wonder whether even the
greatest fictions about one region can tell us much about the claims
made for another. For example, even if Herodotus never set foot in
Egypt, that need have no bearing on whether he visited Olbia. In all this
we are dealing with perceptions of peoples and places which are always
bothlessandmorethanasimpletruth.Bethatasitmay,thereisatleast
common ground between Braund and West in the view that Herodotus
shows no sign of having travelled extensively or for any length of time
in the Black Sea region. As for the north coast in particular, there is no
reason to suppose that he went beyond the limits of Olbia and its civic
territory. More broadly and throughout, there is an abiding and funda-
mental question of our starting-point. Once Herodotus is seen as dupli-
citous,allkindsof detailscanbecalledintoquestion.Bycontrast,if we
begin by taking Herodotus at his word (explicit and strongly implicit),
then such difficulties tend to evaporate. As for the present volume, the
two chapters of Braund and West offer an indirect debate about which
different readers will probably come to different judgements, often in
accordance with the various predispositions from which they start,
unwelcome as the thought may be to those who believe they have ‘an
open mind’.
Next, A. S. Rusyayeva centres her whole discussion on the religious
dimension of contacts between Greeks and non-Greeks, a theme which
crops up in many chapters.Herodotus also bulks large.She finds his per-
spective and information coherent with her broader conception of Olbia’s
world.Further,while stressing the lack of support for Scythian influence
upon the religious life of Olbia, she considers possible evidence for the
introduction of cult and burial practices into Olbia by women from the
wooded steppe to the north. As for Greek influences upon the religion
and religious iconography of the Scythians, she offers a convincing pic-
ture of an impact largely limited to the local elite, in which ‘ordinary’
Scythians and indeed Thracians seem to have taken little part.
4 See the spirited Pritchett 1993 (in defence of Herodotus) against Fehling 1989 and those who
share his views.At issue in the Black Sea is a bronze cauldron,whose size Herodotus evidently
overestimates: cf. S. R. West 2000. Subsidiary claims that he mismeasures the Black Sea and
imagines the Colchians as Ethiopians need not detain us:the size ofthe Pontus is mismeasured
often in antiquity,while the Colchians are compared to Egyptians,not Ethiopians:see further
Pritchett 1993,for example.
Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved
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INTRODUCTION 5
In the next chapter we move decisively north from Olbia well into the
wooded steppe.Here on a pronounced bend in the Dnieper towards Kiev
stands the remarkable settlement at Trakhtemirov, centred upon an ele-
vated promontory on the west bank of the river. Among the remarkable
features of this site are its sheer scale and the evidence of exchange here
with the Aegean in the archaic period, however mediated. Trakhtemirov,
while important in itself,is also part of a much larger picture of the pen-
etration of Greek products northwards in the archaic period, encom-
passing the possibilities of Greek travel and settlement. We may recall
Herodotus’ belief that, further east, Greeks had moved from coastal
trading-centres to settle deep in the hinterland at Gelonos.There is every
reason to suppose that some Greeks did indeed find their way deep into
the hinterland, enacting Aristeas’ dream-like poem in prosaic reality.
For the desire for knowledge,profit,and land was a powerful stimulus.5
The increasing body of evidence for the penetration of Greek goods
(and very possibly Greeks) far to the north reminds us that the classical
perspective on the region is heavily weighted towards the south.Scholars
concerned primarily with the Greek and Roman worlds can easily over-
look or underestimate the importance of the northern hinterland to the
dynamics of movement and exchange within which Olbia was established
and developed. Meanwhile, any consideration of north–south interac-
tions must embrace both the geography of the region, particularly the
great river-ways and the shift from grassland steppe to wooded steppe,
and the peoples who dwelt in this environment. Here Herodotus stands
out, despite shortcomings, through his concern to make distinctions
between the lifestyles and economies of the rather different peoples of the
hinterland,about whom we may imagine much talk at Olbia.In the next
pair of chapters N. A. Leypunskaya, an expert in Greek pottery, and
N. A.Gavrilyuk,who has spearheaded the study of Scythian economics,
follow different but convergent lines of enquiry into the exchanges which
took place on and across the steppe. Rather like Herodotus, they each
seek to locate and explore differences in the region across space and time,
proceeding well beyond generalizations about ‘Scythia’and the like.
Inthefinalchapters,BalbinaBäbler,V.V.Krapivina,andV.M.Zubar
carrythediscussionintotheRomanempire.HereoncemorewefindOlbia
verymuchengagedwithneighbourswhowereGreekandnon-Greek.By
5 Few would now identify Gelonos as Bel’sk,which is fascinating in its own right:see further
Rusyayeva in this volume.On Greek trade north,see Leypunskaya in this volume and Vakhtina
forthcoming.
Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved