Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age PDF
Preview Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age
NOMADS 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 COPYRIGHT© 1995 ZlNAT PRESS, BERKELEY, CA 947O9 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NO PART OF THIS WORK MAY BE REPRODUCED OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL, INCLUDING PHOTOCOPYING AND RECORD- ING, OR BY ANY INFORMATION STORAGE OR RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION FROM ZLNAT PRESS. THIS PUBLICATION WAS SUPPORTED IN PART BY THE KAZAKH/AMERICAN RESEARCH PROJECT, INC. PRINTED ON RECYCLED ACID-FREE ARCHIVAL PAPER NOMADS OF THE EURASIAN STEPPES IN THE EARLY IRON AGE ISBN 1 -885979-OO-2 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUE CARD NUMBER: 95-6O8O5 DISTRIBUTED BY ZINAT PRESS 1 6O7 WALNUT STREET BERKELEY, CA 947O9 FOR ALL THOSE ON BOTH SIDES OF THE OLD IRON CURTAIN WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THIS WORK 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 VI
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