Table Of ContentNOMADS OF THE EURASIAN STEPPES
IN THE
EARLY IRON AGE
NOMADS OF THE EURASIAN STEPPES
IN THE
EARLY IRON AGE
EDITED BY
JEANNINE DAVIS-KIMBALL
VLADIMIR A. BASHILOV
LEONID T. YABLONSKY
ZlNAT PRESS
BERKELEY, CA
1995
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FOR ALL THOSE ON BOTH SIDES OF THE OLD IRON CURTAIN
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The Scythian bronze vessel easily contains five thousand and four hundred
gallons, and it is of six fingers' thickness. This vessel (so said the people of
the country) was made out of arrowheads. For their king, whose name was
Ariantas, desiring to know the number of the Scythians, commanded every
Scythian to bring him the point from an arrow, threatening all who should
not so do with death. So a vast number of arrow-heads was brought, and he
resolved to make and leave a memorial out of them; and he made of these
this bronze vessel, and set it up in this country Exampaeus.
Herodotus 4.81
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD
Jeannine Davis-Kimball v
INTRODUCTION
Vladimir A. Bashilov and Leonid T. Yablonsky xi
LIST OF FIGURES xvü
LIST OF MAPS xxxi
LIST OF DENDOGRAMS xxxi
PART I. THE SCYTHIANS 1
Chapter 1 • Scythian Culture in the North Caucasus
Vladimir G. Petrenko 5
Chapter 2. Scythians of Southeastern Europe
Anna I. Melyukova 27
Chapter 3. Scythian Culture in the Crimea
Valery S. Olkhovsky 63
PART II. THE SAUROMATIANS AND SARMATIANS 83
Chapter 4. A Brief Review of the History of the Sauromatian and
Sarmatian Tribes
Marina G. Moshkova 85
Chapter 5. History of the Studies of the Sauromatian and Sarmatian Tribes
Marina G. Moshkova 91
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 6. Sauromatians and Sarmatians of the Eurasian Steppes:
The Transitional Period from the Bronze Age
Vladimir V. Dvornichenko 101
Chapter 7. Sauromatian Culture
Vladimir V. Dvornichenko 105
Chapter 8. Early Sarmatian Culture
Zoya A. Barbarunova 121
Chapter 9. Middle Sarmatian Culture
Marina G. Moshkova 137
Chapter 10. Late Sarmatian Culture
Marina G. Moshkova 149
Chapter 11. Sarmatians in the North Caucasus
Maya P. Abramova 165
Chapter 12. Sarmatians: Some Concluding Remarks
Marina G. Moshkova 185
PART 111. THE SAKA IN CENTRAL ASIA 189
Chapter 13. Written Sources and the History of Archaeological Studies
of the Saka in Central Asia
Leonid T. Yablonsky 193
Chapter 14. The Material Culture of the Saka and Historical Reconstruction
Leonid T. Yablonsky 201
Central Kazakhstan 209
Lower Syr Darya and Amu Darya River Regions 216
The Tien Shan Mountains and the Semirechiye 232
Ferghana Valley, Tien Shan, and Pamir Mountains 235
Chapter 15. Some Ethnogenetical Hypotheses
Leonid T. Yablonsky 241
PART IV. SCYTHIANS IN SIBERIA 253
Chapter 16. History of Studies and the Main Problems in the
Archaeology of Southern Siberia During the Scythian Period
Nikolai A. Bokovenko 255
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 17. Tuva During the Scythian Period
Nikolai A. Bokovenko 265
Chapter 18. Scythian Culture in the Altai Mountains
Nikolai A. Bokovenko 285
Chapter 19. The Tagar Culture in the Minusinsk Basin
Nikolai A. Bokovenko 299
PART V. EARLY NOMADS OF MONGOLIA 315
Chapter 20. Early Nomads of Mongolia
Vitali V. Volkov 319
BIBLIOGRAPHIC ABBREVIATIONS 335
BIBLIOGRAPHY 339
INDEX 375
INDEX OF CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS 399
FOREWORD
JEANNINE DAVIS-KlMBALL
I cannot remember when I first heard of the steppes and the high mountain ranges of Central Asia,
Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. Fascinated by far-off places and people, it was not until 1985, as guests of Intour-
ist, that my husband and I were able to visit Samarkand and Bokhara, important ancient cities that flourished
along the Great Silk Road. In 1988, under the sponsorship of the Institute of Ethnography, Academy of Sci-
ence of the U.S.S.R., we spent a month in Kazakhstan. I remember the magnificent faces of the 100 nationali-
ties, many which could be seen, each selling their specific product, in the great Alma Ata bazaar. The yurts and
houses revealed the beautiful hand-wrought textiles and felts, and the metal and leather objects which the
nomads crafted for use in everyday life. The Kazakh dance, and their music made by plucking the dombra and
bowing the kybis, revealed their ties to epic poets and shamans. In museums the juxtaposed works of contem-
porary artists and ancient treasures revealed a lifestyle unknown in the Western World.
Later that year in Moscow I met ethnographers, archaeologists, and historians from the then U.S.S.R.
Academy of Sciences, who began sharing their knowledge and experiences with me. For the next several
summers, after establishing the Kazakh / American Research Project, Inc. and a formal working agreement
with the Kazakh Academy of Sciences, Institute of History, Ethnography, and Archaeology, we participated in
the excavations of Saka kurgans in the vicinity of Issyk, near Almaty, as the city is called today. Later in the
summers we also worked at the Medieval site, Kos Tobe, located near Djambul. We travelled the length of the
ancient Silk Road in Kazakhstan from Otrar in the west to Taldy Kurgan in the east. In the spring we ate with
the Kazakh herders on the steppes and in the summer with those in the high Tien Shan pastures. At Tamgaly,
a cultic site dating from the Bronze Age and still venerated today, archaeologists guided us through thousands
of petroglyphs that reveal belief systems which flourished over the millennia.
The Iron Curtain literally came down when we were in Moscow and the putsch occurred only two
weeks after we had returned to the States. These events changed the course of my work in the territories of the
former Soviet Union. In 1988 while in Moscow, I had met Dr. Leonid T. Yablonsky, an archaeologist and
physical anthropologist at the Institute of Archaeology, who was excavating Saka burials in the lower Amu
Darya River Delta. By 1990 Russian archaeologists could no longer excavate in "foreign lands." Yablonsky,
in need of a new site, surveyed a large group of Sauro-Sarmatian kurgan cemeteries located south of Orenburg
in the Kazakh steppes. He invited me to join those excavations the following year. During the course of our
conversations I mentioned that there was a paucity of information on Early Nomad archaeology in Western
languages. I suggested that he and his colleagues at the Institute of Archaeology might write about Early Iron
Age archaeology in the U.S.S.R. for publication in English. Thus began the work which produced Nomads of
the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age.
FOREWORD
Written by 10 of the foremost Russian archaeologists, Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early
Iron Age is an anthology of essays which seeks to provide English readers with an overview of the Early Iron
Age archaeological research in the U.S.S.R. primarily between 1960 and 1990. The work is divided into five
parts which reviews the Scythians, the Sauromatians and Sarmatians, the Saka, the Scythian-like cultures in
Southern Siberia, and the Early Iron Age Mongolians. The Scythian material was written by Dr. Vladimir G.
Petrenko, Prof. Anna I. Melyukova, and Dr. Valery S. Olkhovsky. The Sauromatian and Sarmatian historical
and archaeological perspectives were prepared by Prof. Marina G. Moshkova, Dr. Vladimir V. Dvornichenko,
Zoya A. Barbarunova, and Prof. Maya P. Abramova. Dr. Leonid T. Yablonsky authored the section on the Saka
of Central Asia. Dr. Nikolai A. Bokovenko outlined the studies of the Southern Siberian nomadic cultures
during Scythian times. And Prof. Vitali V Volkhov covered the Early Nomads of northern Mongolia. With the
exception of Dr. Bokovenko, who is with the Institute of Material Culture History in St. Petersburg, all au-
thors and editor Vladimir A. Bashilov, are associated with the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of
Archaeology located in Moscow. Short biographies of each of the contributing Russian authors and editors
are found at the end of the Introduction.
The earliest discoveries within the great kurgans of southern Russia occurred before the advent of a
formal archaeological discipline in that country. Many of the spectacular gold objects from the "tsar" kurgans,
with their dynamic iconography, have consistently formed the corpus that has been published in Western
languages. The intent of those who have worked on Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age has
been to focus on archaeology which reflects the general nomadic population and the mortuary finds not
previously published in the West. With few exceptions, such as the great Arzhan kurgan in Tuva and a brief
review of the late 19th and early 20th century excavations in southern Russia, this goal has been accom-
plished. It is the pottery, horse trappings, and weaponry that reflect the daily existence of the nomads who
lived more than two millennia ago and that compose the vast majority of the illustrations.
Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age covers the research during the years in which
the most intense Soviet archaeological investigations took place. A historiography of the archaeology sets the
stage in each region. A review of the earliest Russian, and then the subsequent Soviet excavations, identifies
the pioneering archaeologists who developed this new discipline in the U.S.S.R. The contemporary authors of
this work, whose materials cover the regions where the tribes that juxtaposed the cities and empires lived, use
the literature of antique Greek and Roman authors as comparative materials in their interpretive processes.
The contemporary authors have also presented many of the problems they have encountered in the reconstruc-
tions of early nomadic societies. It will be apparent, as coeditors Bashilov and Yablonsky have pointed out in
the Introduction, that although many parallels exist in the various "Scytho-Siberian-Saka" cultures, at the
same time there are incredible dissimilarities.
In the transliteration of most place names and cultures, adjectival endings have been retained. Be-
cause in Russian the adjectival endings vary according to gender, the ending of the adjective may vary. The
exception to this rule of retaining adjectival endings are the two cultures, Tagarskaya, Tagar, and Karasukskaya,
Karasuk, and some cemeteries or kurgans such as Kelermes belonging to the Scythian Culture in southern
Russia. These spellings have been in common usage for several decades.
By necessity, the material in Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age is complex for
each cultural/geographic section in the anthology and covers a vast period in time and space. Central Asia,
Middle Asia, and Inner Asia, regional geographic terminology used by the authors of this monograph, have
not been consistently employed. In editing we have attempted to place lesser- known areas within the frame-
work of the terminology used in the Western World. Russians usually, but not always, include Mongolia and
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