Bogucki P., Crabtree P. Ancient Europe 8000 B.C.-A.D. 1000: Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World. Volume 2

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

fringes of the inhabitable world. Other Greek ac-

counts also mention the Cimmerians, as do some

Near Eastern sources. Both tend to concentrate on

those aspects of Cimmerian history of direct rele-

vance to other well-known peoples and civilizations,

such as Assyria and Phrygia. In general, little is

known about the Cimmerians, and for modern

scholars they are still enveloped in fog and darkness.

A summary of the written accounts is useful, how-

ever.

The ﬁrst Assyrian references to the Cimmerians

date from the period between 722 and 713

B.C.

During the reign of the Assyrian king Sennacherib

(705–681

B.C.), the Cimmerians attacked Asia

Minor and destroyed the Phrygian Empire: Phryg-

ia’s King Midas committed suicide. This presum-

ably happened in 696–695

B.C., although a date

twenty years later is possible. A group of Cimmeri-

ans probably settled for some time near Sinope

(modern Sinop). The military leader of the Cimme-

rians in their 679–678

B.C. campaign is called Tuspa

in Assyrian records. Another group of Cimmerians

probably entered Anatolia from Thrace. This is sug-

gested by the ancient Greek geographer Strabo,

writing in the late ﬁrst century

B.C. and early ﬁrst

century

A.D. He speaks about an alliance between

the Cimmerians and the Thracian Treres and Edoni

tribes who later lived in central Bulgaria and in

Chalcidice, respectively. The Lydian king Gyges

even sought aid against them from the Assyrian king

Assurbanapal. An attack on Lydia in 652

B.C. was

successful. The Lydian capital Sardis was sacked and

Gyges was killed.

Most Cimmerians had left their lands in the

Black Sea steppe because of the arrival of the Scythi-

ans (see below) from the east, who were in turn

under pressure from the Massagetae. This took

place before 713

B.C., when both the Cimmerians

and, following them, the Scythians reached the re-

gion of Urartu. Herodotus, the ﬁfth century

B.C.

Greek geographer, explicitly mentions the Tyras

River (the Dniester) as the place where the Cimme-

rian kings fought a fratricidal battle and were bur-

ied, and from where the common people left their

homes. He also describes the Cimmerian’s subse-

quent escape along the Black Sea west of the Cauca-

sus to the area of Sinope. Some Cimmerians, how-

ever, remained on the shores of Lake Maeotis (the

Sea of Azov). The Cimmerian Bosporus (also

known as the Kerch Strait), Cimmerian Walls, and

Cimmerian Peninsula are all in this same area (the

Crimea and its surrounds), much farther east than

Tyras/Dniester, and equally distant from the River

Araxes (now known as the Araks), the original east-

ern boundary of the Cimmerians. The fratricidal

battle of the Cimmerian leaders on the Dniester

seems to have marked the last stage of the Cimmeri-

an retreat.

These movements in the Near East are all that

we know of the Cimmerians from written sources.

It is most probable that the Cimmerians were not

a single tribe and that this was a collective name for

a large number of tribes living in the steppes of the

Ukraine and European Russia. This is a very impor-

tant point when examining Cimmerian culture and

the archaeological evidence for it. The archaeologi-

cal material does not permit us to single out one cul-

ture to which the label “Cimmerian” can ﬁrmly be

attached. Several generations of archaeologists have

sought to provide archaeological evidence of the

Cimmerians and their culture but without any posi-

tive results. The search for the Cimmerians is based

on the proposition that, because the Cimmerians

were expelled by the Scythians, any pre-Scythian

culture throughout the huge territory mentioned

above must be Cimmerian.

Another difﬁculty is that all these so-called

Cimmerian cultures have Scythian features, and

their objects executed in Animal Style are extremely

close to the Scythian and Near Eastern variants of

this type. It is practically impossible with current

knowledge to distinguish a Cimmerian culture in

archaeological terms. It is so close to Scythian that

modern scholars have taken refuge in the labels

“pre-Scythian” or “Early Scythian” to describe the

cultures of the ninth and eighth centuries

B.C.

THE SCYTHIANS

As noted above, the arrival of the Scythians resulted

in the expulsion of the so-called Cimmerians. The

main sources for knowledge of the Scythians are ar-

chaeology and book 4 of The Histories by Herodo-

tus. Like the Cimmerians, the Scythians spoke an

Iranian-related language, and the term “Scythians”

represents a general name for many different tribes,

whose individual names Herodotus lists as Royal

Scythians, Agricultural Scythians, Callipedae, Ala-

zones, and others. The Scythians came from north-

6: THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

290

ANCIENT EUROPE

ern Siberia at the end of the eighth and the ﬁrst half

of the seventh centuries

B.C. Initially, they lived in

the steppes of the northern Caucasus, not far from

the Kuban River. The crucial point in the creation

of Scythian culture was the middle seventh century,

when a part of their population migrated to the

Near East, remaining there, according to Herodo-

tus, for twenty-eight years. Their presence was di-

sastrous for the Near Eastern empires such as the

Assyrian. They destroyed Urartu and they raided as

far as Egypt. For the Scythians themselves this peri-

od was important in the formation of their culture,

upon which Near Eastern civilizations had a very

strong inﬂuence. When the Scythians returned to

the Caucasian steppes at the end of the seventh and

beginning of the sixth centuries, they possessed a

strongly formed culture in which Anatolian/Near

Eastern Animal Style had taken root. Scythian

tombs dating to the period after their return from

the Near East have been discovered in the northern

Caucasus. They show how Scythian rulers now imi-

tated those of Assyria, Media, and Urartu, and em-

ployed Near Eastern craftsmen to this end.

During the sixth century

B.C., thanks to close

interaction between the Scythians and the local

population of the Kuban region (including the

Maeotians), Scythian culture showed increasing

signs of Greek inﬂuence, but it continued to contain

Near Eastern features. The failure of the Persian

king Darius I to conquer them in 514–513

B.C. en-

hanced Scythian self-conﬁdence. At the end of the

sixth and beginning of the ﬁfth centuries

B.C., they

formed their own political entities: one based in the

Crimean steppes, not far from the future Bosporan

kingdom; the other on the lower Dnieper, not far

from Olbia. Classical Scythian culture, which dates

from the end of the ﬁfth and beginning of the

fourth centuries

B.C., when most of the Scythians

were becoming a settled agricultural population, is

indeed the result of close artistic links between the

Scythian and Greek worlds. Nevertheless, it is not

particularly difﬁcult to identify Near Eastern tradi-

tions within it.

The most characteristic feature of Scythian cul-

ture is the tumulus, or kurgan. Many of the graves

belong to the elite. Altogether, about 3,000 tumuli

are known. Over time the incidence of the burial

mounds varies. The vast majority, some 2,000, date

from the Classical period of Scythian culture, espe-

cially the fourth century B.C., and are concentrated

on both banks of the lower Dnieper. This is where

Herodotus located Gerrhi, the burial place of the

Scythian kings, in the vicinity of the Sea of Azov and

the Crimea. In some cases, Bronze Age tumuli were

reused, but most were built specially for burying the

elite and were constructed in several stages. The

main feature of these tombs is the earth mound, the

usual height of which varied between 3 and 21 me-

ters and the diameter between 30 and 350 meters.

Another characteristic feature is the stone chamber

and the dromos leading to it; antechambers were

rare. Usually, the chamber was rectangular and had

a step-vaulted stone roof. The chambers were very

large and their height varied between 4 and 14 me-

ters. Some tombs have several chambers. Most tu-

muli were robbed in antiquity, but the richest to

survive untouched contained several dozen gold

and silver objects (jewelry, vessels), amphorae, and

luxurious Greek pottery. Sometimes horses and

slaves were buried with their owners.

GREEK COLONIZATION

The Scythians were the principal local people en-

countered by the Greek colonists who established

settlements on the northern shore of the Black Sea.

The relationship between the two groups shaped

the history of the Greek cities of the region for sev-

eral centuries.

The ﬁrst Eastern Greek settlements in the area,

mainly Ionian, appeared in the second half of the

seventh century

B.C. Not much is known about Ar-

chaic colonies, including their layouts; however, the

ﬁrst colonies were quite small. In the sixth century

B.C. the area of Panticapaeum (which occupied the

site of modern Kerch) was about 7.5 hectares, with

a population of about 2,000–3,000. The territory of

Olbia in the ﬁrst half of the same century was 6 hect-

ares; in the second half it was 16.5 hectares. In the

middle sixth century, Phanagoria was built on a hill;

it covered an area of 20 to 22.5 hectares. It was the

only early colony to show evidence of settlement

planning and regular streets. The thoroughfares had

a width of between 1.5 and 3 meters, and houses

were constructed next to each other along both

sides of the streets. There is (so far) no evidence of

the formation of an agora (marketplace) or temenos

(sacral place) as a distinct part of any of the towns

until the last quarter of the sixth century. Shrines,

IRON AGE UKRAINE AND EUROPEAN RUSSIA

ANCIENT EUROPE

291

such as that of Demeter in Nymphaeum, had quite

primitive architecture and were not distinguished

from dwelling houses. Recent investigation in Bere-

zan has yielded a small temple of the Late Archaic

period. Domestic architecture built between the

very end of the seventh century and the last quarter

of the sixth century

B.C. has very distinctive features.

So far no aboveground stone dwelling houses are

known; instead, so-called dugouts or semi-dugouts

predominate. Entire quarters of these pits were

found in many Greek cities: in Olbia, for example,

there is a street with pit dwellings laid out regularly

down one side, and with a few on the opposite side.

The relationship between the ﬁrst colonists and

the local population was quite peaceful. A large

amount of handmade pottery has been found in the

Greek settlements, representing 12 to 23 percent of

the total pottery ﬁnds. Because such pottery was

mainly a product of the local population, this high

concentration seems to indicate that local people

lived in the settlements alongside the colonists.

Such an arrangement might be evidence of a paciﬁc

relationship. Speaking generally, the seventh and

sixth centuries

B.C. saw no complications in the rela-

tions between Greeks and locals. This is indicated

by the absence of fortiﬁcation systems in the north-

ern Black Sea colonies until the Classical period.

In the last twenty-ﬁve years of the sixth century

B.C., a completely new period in the history of the

Greek settlements started. Previously the colonies

had not looked very Greek with their pit houses and

simple construction, but from the Late Archaic peri-

od they exhibited the same characteristic features

known in mainland Greece and other areas of Greek

colonization. Major cities had designated areas such

as an agora and a temenos. All houses were built of

stone and mud brick. From the end of the sixth cen-

tury

B.C. all houses were aboveground, roofed with

tiles, had cellars or semi-cellars, and were rectangu-

lar in plan. Some were of two stories; all followed

the rules of Greek domestic architecture. Most rich

houses were built using the architectural orders and

covered up to 550 square meters; some were stuc-

co-clad. The typical small house covered an area of

between 80 and 200 square meters; a large one cov-

ered from 200 up to 600 square meters. The num-

ber of rooms ranged between three and fourteen.

Streets were paved with stones, pebbles and

pieces of pottery. By the fourth century

B.C. a com-

prehensive street pattern had formed. Main streets

in the various cities were 6 to 11 meters wide; side

streets between 4 and 5 meters wide; alleys and pas-

sageways between 1 and 1.5 meters across. The ter-

races on which Olbia and Panticapaeum were con-

structed were linked by ﬂights of paved steps.

Beneath the streets were stone drains and sewers.

There were stone-lined wells and water fountains.

In Olbia, clay pipes or small stone channels carried

water into individual houses from the main channel

that brought drinking water into the city. In major

cities, stone temples were built in the temenos, usu-

ally rich in architectural decoration. In Olbia, the

agora and temenos adjoined. The former extended

to 2,000 square meters and was paved with pieces

of ceramic, stones, and pebbles. Along the northern

coast of the Black Sea the ﬁrst fortiﬁcation systems

appeared at the beginning of the ﬁfth century

B.C.,

and they were destroyed and rebuilt in various cities

between the fourth and second centuries

B.C.

THE BOSPORAN KINGDOM

As mentioned above, after the failure of Darius I’s

Scythian campaign, the Scythians established two

political entities—one not far from the Bosporan

kingdom and the other near Olbia. It was also dur-

ing this period that the Odrysian kingdom was cre-

ated in what is now Bulgaria. War soon broke out

between Scythians and the Odrysians but ended

quickly in a truce, freeing the Scythians to direct

their attentions toward the Greek cities, including

Olbia and settlements on the Kerch and Taman

peninsulas. The Scythians soon established a protec-

torate over Olbia.

It was at this time that the Greek cities of the

two peninsulas uniﬁed into a single state, the Bos-

poran kingdom, with its capital at Panticapaeum.

Although the reason for the uniﬁcation remains a

matter of debate, many scholars link it to the need

to combat increasing Scythian pressure on the cities.

From this period onward, relations between the

Greek cities and the Scythians were characterized by

the payment of tribute and the giving of gifts. Stra-

bo, for example, tells us that land for settlement and

agriculture was given by local tribal chiefs—that is,

the Scythians—either by special agreement or in ex-

change for a moderate tribute. Furthermore, one

inscription of the late ﬁfth century, from Kerkinitis

in western Crimea, mentions the payment of tribute

to the Scythians.

6: THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

292

ANCIENT EUROPE

From the cultural point of view, the political

difﬁculties between the Scythians and Greek cities

resulted in the creation of a unique phenomenon:

Greco-barbarian art. The Greeks produced many

highly artistic objects for the local royal family and

elite. From the ﬁfth century

B.C., these local upper

classes were hellenized—a process that went further

in the fourth century. Greek craftsmen were active

at the courts of local rulers, who employed them, as

in Anatolia, to produce objects in the Greek style

but adapted to the tastes of the local elite. Herodo-

tus tells an interesting story about the Scythian king

Scyles who had been taught by his Greek mother

from Histria to know Greek religion and the Greek

way of life. He had a house and a Greek wife in

Olbia and regularly stayed there.

The Bosporan kingdom, a unique political enti-

ty, was, from its establishment in about 480

B.C.,

similar in all respects to the Hellenistic kingdoms.

It was surrounded by local agrarian population—

the Maeotae, Sindians, Dandarii, and others near

the Taman Peninsula—and the Nomadic Scythians

in the Crimea. From the formation of this state, the

relationship between Bosporan Greeks and the local

peoples around the Taman Peninsula and the

Kuban basin remained peaceful, and by the middle

of the fourth century

B.C. all of these populations

were incorporated into the kingdom. Relations be-

tween the Bosporan kingdom and the Nomadic

Scythians are not very clear, but they were probably

quite hostile, in view of the various earthen fortiﬁca-

tions found in the Kerch Peninsula. Another people

inhabiting the Crimea were the Taurians. After the

establishment of Dorian Chersonesus in eastern

Crimea c. 422

B.C., they were pushed back by the

colonists into the mountains.

GREEK PENETRATION INTO

THE HINTERLAND

In ancient times the northern Black Sea steppes

(present-day Ukraine and the south of European

Russia) were not just a multiethnic territory but an

active contact zone in which interaction between

local peoples and between locals and Greek colo-

nists can be studied. The evidence demonstrates not

just a trade relationship between Greeks and locals

but also how Greeks penetrated deep into the hin-

terland, even residing in the settlements that formed

the political and production centers of local tribes.

The most interesting example of this is the Belsk

settlement, situated not far from Poltava in the

Ukraine (about 500 kilometers inland from the

Black Sea). Some believe it to be the city of Gelonus

inhabited by the Budini and the Geloni (one of the

Scythian tribes). The site has yielded about ten

thousand pieces of Greek pottery dating from the

Archaic and Classical periods. To understand what

kind of settlement this was, let us turn to book 4 of

The Histories by Herodotus:

The Budini, a numerous and powerful nation, all

have markedly blue-grey eyes and red hair; there is

a town in their territory called Gelonus, all built of

wood, both dwelling-houses and temples, with a

high wooden wall round it, thirty furlongs each

way. There are temples here in honour of Greek

gods, adorned after the Greek manner with statues,

altars, and shrines—though all constructed of

wood; a triennial festival, with the appropriate rev-

elry, is held in honour of Dionysus. This is to be ac-

counted for by the fact that the Geloni were origi-

nally Greeks, who, driven out of the seaports along

the coast, settled amongst the Budini. Their lan-

guage is still half Scythian, half Greek. The lan-

guage of the Budini is quite different, as, indeed,

is their culture generally.

The excavator of this site, Boris Andreevich

(B. A.) Shramko, indeed believes that he has found

a small sanctuary of the sixth through fourth centu-

ries

B.C. built with wooden columns. Inside is an

altar, and not far away is a pit containing cult offer-

ings. This could indicate a Greek population of mer-

chants and artisans, probably small, from the Archa-

ic period.

From the fourth century and in the Hellenistic

period, there is much stronger evidence to demon-

strate that Greeks lived permanently in local settle-

ments, establishing their own quarters there. El-

izavetovskoe is a settlement on the Don River, at a

point where three cultural zones meet—Scythian,

Maeotian, and Sarmatian. It dates from the end of

the sixth century or the beginning of the ﬁfth centu-

B.C. The important feature at Elizavetovskoe is

the presence of a quarter populated by Bosporan

Greeks. The quarter dates from the second half of

the fourth century

B.C., when the acropolis was

strengthened with stone towers and walls. Detailed

investigation has shown that the Greek quarter was

the settlement’s trading area and was inhabited by

Greeks from the Bosporan kingdom. It ceased to

exist at some point at the very beginning of the third

IRON AGE UKRAINE AND EUROPEAN RUSSIA

ANCIENT EUROPE

293

century B.C., replaced by a new settlement, a so-

called Bosporan trading center (emporion), which

existed until about 275–270

B.C. The houses of the

emporion were built of stone in the Greek manner,

and the settlement was fortiﬁed against the rest of

the city, where the local population lived.

Kamenskoe, a Scythian settlement on the Dnie-

per, far into the hinterland, is another important

site. It was the political and economic center of this

part of Scythia, covering some 1,200 hectares.

There is very strong evidence that Greeks lived in

the acropolis from the fourth century

B.C.: it had a

stone fortiﬁcation system constructed using Greek

techniques, Greek-type stone dwellings, and stone-

paved streets. Not far from the acropolis there was

a harbor.

Further examples come from the Semibratnoe

and Raevskoe settlements, not far from the Taman

Peninsula. Unfortunately, neither has been studied

very well, and the archaeological investigations that

have taken place have not been published in detail.

Semibratnoe, situated not far from Gorgippia,

yielded very impressive Greek-type stone architec-

ture and a fortiﬁcation system. An inscription from

it demonstrates that it was the residence of the Bos-

poran governor/prince within the lands of the local

population. Raevskoe dates mainly from the Helle-

nistic period and has Greek-type domestic and pub-

lic architecture.

Bosporan Greeks in the Hellenistic period were

most active in trying to penetrate the hinterland and

establish settlements within the territories of the

local population. One of the best studied of such

settlements is Tanais, not far where the Don ﬂows

into the Sea of Azov. Strabo gives a very clear idea

of its character:

On the river and the lake is an inhabited city bear-

ing the same name, Tanais; it was founded by the

Greeks who held the Bosporus.... It was a com-

mon emporium, partly of the Asiatic and the Euro-

pean nomads, and partly of those who navigated

the lake from the Bosporus, the former bringing

slaves, hides, and such other things as nomads pos-

sess, and the latter giving in exchange clothing,

wine, and the other things that belong to civilised

life.

Archaeological excavation has demonstrated that

this settlement was established in the ﬁrst half of the

third century

B.C. It had fortiﬁcation walls and an

internal wall dividing the Greek and local sectors.

LATE SCYTHIANS AND THE

PONTIC KINGDOM

The period from the late fourth century through the

third century

B.C. brought massive change. Semi-

nomadic Sarmatian tribes moved in from the Volga

area, expelling the Scythians and taking over their

territory. Some Scythians were assimilated and oth-

ers were killed; most ﬂed to central Crimea, estab-

lishing a new kingdom. The kingdom’s capital was

Scythian Neapolis (at the site of modern Simfero-

pol), which lasted until the third century

A.D. In the

literature these Scythians are called “Late Scythi-

ans.” The rulers and elite of this new kingdom were

heavily hellenized. Scythian Neapolis had Greek-

type fortiﬁcations, public buildings, and sculptural

decorations. Soon these Scythians became hostile to

the Chersonesus state and its agricultural territories,

leading to a war that lasted from the second quarter

of the second century to the middle of the ﬁrst cen-

tury

B.C. The Scythians captured the Chersonesite

agricultural territory in northwestern Crimea and

surrounded Chersonesus itself. In response, Cher-

sonesus sought the help of Mithridates VI Eupator,

ruler of the Pontic kingdom. In about 110

B.C., he

sent his general Diophantus to Chersonesus at the

head of a Pontic army. Diophantus undertook a

number of campaigns against the Scythians, liberat-

ing Kerkinitis, Kalos Limen, and other Chersonesite

settlements in the northwestern Crimea and captur-

ing various Scythian fortresses in the hinterland. As

a result, the Bosporus kingdom, Chersonesus, and,

apparently, the Late Scythian kingdom itself, all be-

came part of Mithridates’s Pontic domain. Olbia

and other cities of the northwestern Black Sea area

had probably been incorporated into the Pontic

kingdom by the end of the second century

B.C.

The Greek cities of the northern shore of the

Black Sea played an important role during the wars

between Mithridates and Rome. They were Mithri-

dates’ principal suppliers of provisions, people, and

ships, to which end Mithridates maintained very

close contacts with the local barbarian leaders.

Mithridates, after being defeated by the Romans

and betrayed by his own son, killed himself in Panti-

capaeum in 63

B.C. The ensuing political chaos wit-

nessed frequent changes of rulers in the major

Greek cities of the northern Black Sea, often at the

initiative or with the active connivance of Rome.

Gradually, Roman appetite and inﬂuence grew, but

it was not until the beginning of the second century

6: THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

294

ANCIENT EUROPE

A.D. that the whole area became fully integrated into

the Roman Empire.

See also Greek Colonies in the East (vol. 2, part 6);

Scythians (vol. 2, part 7).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bouzek, Jan. Greece, Anatolia and Europe: Cultural Interre-

lations during the Early Iron Age. Studies in Mediterra-

nean Archaeology, vol. 122. Jonsered, Sweden: Paul

ströms Förlag, 1997.

Davis-Kimball, Jeannine, Vladimir A. Bashilov, and Leonid

T. Yablonsky, eds. Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the

Early Iron Age. Berkeley, Calif.: Zinat Press, 1995.

Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Sélin-

court. Revised by A. R. Burn. London: Penguin, 1972.

Hind, J. G. F. “Archaeology of the Greeks and Barbarian

Peoples around the Black Sea (1982–1992).” Archaeo-

logical Reports 39 (1992–1993): 82–112.

Reeder, Ellen D., ed. Scythian Gold: Treasures from Ancient

Ukraine. New York: Harry N. Abrams in association

with the Walters Art Gallery and the San Antonio Muse-

um of Art, 1999.

Rolle, Renate. The World of the Scythians. Translated by

Gayna Walls. London: Batsford, 1989.

Sauter, Hermann. Studien zum Kimmerierproblem. Saar-

brücker Beiträge zur Altertumskunde 72. Bonn, Ger-

many: R. Habelt, 2000.

Strabo. The Geography of Strabo. Translated by Horace

Leonard Jones. 8 Vols. London: William Heinemann,

1917.

Treister, Michail J., and Yuri G. Vinogradov. “Archaeology

on the Northern Coast of the Black Sea.” American

Journal of Archaeology 97, no. 3 (1993): 521–563.

Tsetskhladze, Gocha R. “Who Built the Scythian and Thra-

cian Royal and Elite Tombs?” Oxford Journal of Ar-

chaeology 17, no. 1 (1998): 55–92.

———, ed. North Pontic Archaeology: Recent Discoveries and

Studies. Colloquia Pontica, vol. 6. Leiden, The Nether-

lands, and Boston: Brill, 2001.

———, ed. Ancient Greeks West and East. Mnemosyne Bib-

liotheca Classica Batava Supplementum 196. Leiden,

The Netherlands, and Boston: Brill, 1999.

———, ed. The Greek Colonisation of the Black Sea Area.

Historical Interpretation of Archaeology. Historia Ein-

zelschriften 121. Stuttgart, Germany: Steiner, 1998.

Tsetskhladze, Gocha R., and A. M. Snodgrass, eds. Greek

Settlements in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black

Sea. BAR International Series, no. 1062. Oxford: Ar-

chaeopress, 2002.

OCHA R. TSETSKHLADZE

IRON AGE UKRAINE AND EUROPEAN RUSSIA

ANCIENT EUROPE

295

THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

IRON AGE EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE

■

During the second half of the nineteenth century,

when archaeologists developed the outlines of the

current system of chronology for prehistoric Eu-

rope, they deﬁned the Iron Age as the time when

iron came into use as the principal material for mak-

ing tools. Since iron technology was adopted gradu-

ally, deﬁning the beginning of the Iron Age is some-

what arbitrary. There is no break, either in

technology or in other aspects of human culture,

between the Late Bronze Age and the Early Iron

Age. Small iron tools occur on settlements in parts

of east-central Europe from 1000

B.C. on, but larger

implements do not appear until after 800

B.C. By

generally agreed deﬁnition, the Iron Age in east-

central Europe began about 800

B.C. For the pur-

poses of this discussion, three periods are distin-

guished: an Early Iron Age, 800–450

B.C.; a Middle

Iron Age, 450–200

B.C.; and a Late Iron Age, 200

B.C. to the Roman conquest.

The region of east-central Europe deﬁned

here—the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and

the lands of the former Yugoslavia—includes a vari-

ety of different landscapes and was home to distinct

cultural traditions during the Iron Age. Except for

the Great Hungarian Plain, most of the land is hilly

and mountainous. The entire region is dominated

by the Danube River valley, and important smaller

rivers, such as the Elbe, the Tisza, and the Sava, also

played important roles in communities’ selection of

places to settle and in trade systems. This short re-

view emphasizes patterns that are characteristic of

large portions of east-central Europe, while at the

same time noting signiﬁcant variability.

EARLY IRON AGE (800–450

B.C.

)

The basic settlement, subsistence, craft-working,

and trade systems at the start of the Iron Age were

similar to those of the preceding Late Bronze Age.

Beginning as early as the ninth century

B.C., howev-

er, objects associated with horseback riding, such as

bits and harness ornaments, indicating links with re-

gions to the east, appeared in graves and in hoard

deposits over much of east-central Europe, includ-

ing the Great Hungarian Plain, western Slovakia,

and Croatia. Debate surrounds the question of

whether these objects indicate primarily migration

of peoples from north of the Black Sea or new con-

tacts made between peoples in these different re-

gions. In the succeeding centuries, horse-riding ma-

terial of bronze, iron, and bone played an important

role in burial ritual and attests to the signiﬁcance of

horseback riding among Early Iron Age elites. In

some regions burial practice included the placing of

four-wheeled wagons in the richest graves, as in the

Bylany culture graves at Hradenín in Bohemia.

In much of Europe, burial practice during the

Late Bronze Age was commonly by cremation in

ﬂat graves, and in the Early Iron Age inhumation

and burying the dead under mounds became wide-

spread. In some places, mounds were erected over

individual graves; in others, such as Slovenia, great

communal mounds became the rule, with as many

as two hundred graves in a mound. These were

highly visible structures, meant to be seen by the liv-

ing. The change to mound burial indicates a new

concern with permanent display of status among

many of the peoples of east-central Europe.

296

ANCIENT EUROPE

Hilltop Centers.

During the Early Iron Age, the

rise to prominence of major centers of political

power and of economic activity constituted a

change from Bronze Age circumstances. This

change is particularly evident in Slovenia, where

major fortiﬁed hilltop settlements were created at

numerous locations during the eighth century

B.C.

Among the best studied are Magdalenska gora,

Most na Socˇi, Sticˇna, and Vacˇe. Each of these settle-

ments is accompanied by large cemeteries of com-

munal burial mounds. Sticˇna is the most fully inves-

tigated. There, the fortiﬁed area measures about

800 by 400 meters, and investigators have counted

about 150 mounds in the low land around the set-

tlement. One excavated mound at Sticˇna contained

nearly two hundred graves, suggesting how large

the cemetery, and thus the population, may have

been.

Sticˇna and other settlements in Slovenia were

centers of iron production, and the graves indicate

substantial manufacture of spearheads, axes, horse

bits, and other implements from the eighth century

B.C. on. Bronze working also was a highly devel-

oped craft, with large-scale manufacture of personal

ornaments, ornate bronze vessels, and armor, such

as helmets and cuirasses. Glass production was a sig-

niﬁcant industry as well. Hundreds of multicolored

beads occur in many graves, and glass beads from

this region reached communities all over Europe.

Commerce brought amber from the shores of the

Baltic Sea, Etruscan pottery and bronze objects, and

even ornate feasting equipment from the Near East.

Similar centers emerged in other parts of the re-

gion. At Závist in Bohemia, a fortiﬁed settlement

was established on a hilltop during the sixth century

B.C. Workshop evidence shows that a range of

goods was manufactured. The community import-

ed amber from the Baltic region and glass beads

from centers in Slovenia. The excavators of the site

believe that a major ritual complex at the top of the

hill, deﬁned by a rectangular enclosure 28 meters on

a side surrounded by a ditch dug into the bedrock,

was established at Závist. In western Slovakia, a for-

tiﬁed hilltop settlement dating to the seventh and

sixth centuries

B.C. has been excavated at Smole-

nice-Molpír. Like other hilltop sites, this one attests

to both a central role in production and the pres-

ence of high-status individuals buried in nearby

cemeteries. Other fortiﬁed hilltop centers of this pe-

riod include sites at Sopron and Velemszentvid in

Hungary.

Figural Art.

Among the Early Iron Age peoples

of temperate Europe, ﬁgural art was a special devel-

opment in parts of east-central Europe. This art-

work includes ﬁgurines placed in graves or in depos-

its, particularly in Slovenia and Hungary. Figures

incised on pottery are representative of cemeteries

at Sopron in Hungary and at Nové Kosˇariská in Slo-

vakia. The most complex of the ﬁgural art, the Situla

art of Slovenia and regions to the west, is a speciﬁc

characteristic of the major centers there, such as

Magdalenska gora, Sticˇna, and Vacˇe (ﬁg. 1). Of par-

ticular interest for studies of the Early Iron Age are

scenes that show people engaged in various activi-

ties.

Among the ﬁgures incised on pottery, common

themes include persons with their arms raised as if

in honor of a deity, individuals riding on horseback

and driving wagons, and people playing musical in-

struments, especially lyres. Important scenes ﬁgured

on pottery from the graves at Sopron include those

IRON AGE EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE

ANCIENT EUROPE

297

showing persons spinning and weaving textiles. In

the Situla art of Slovenia and regions to the west, a

variety of complex activities are represented, among

them, scenes that show feasting, hunting, proces-

sions, athletic contests, and well-armed troops

marching in formation.

Interpretations of these complex representa-

tions fall into two main groups. One set views the

scenes as pictures of the festive lives of the elites at

the centers. The objects shown in the banqueting

scenes, in the illustrations of athletic contests, and

in the depictions of marching soldiers (such as ves-

sels, helmets, axes, spears, and shields) match ob-

jects found in the graves. This provides a clear link

between the representations and the local commu-

nities at which the scenes were created by craft

workers and found by archaeologists. The spindle

whorls and looms portrayed in the incised scenes of

textile working on the pots at Sopron correspond to

implements found in women’s burials there and

elsewhere.

The other group of interpretations regards

these scenes as mythological or religious in nature,

not depicting real people but rather telling stories

of mythical signiﬁcance. Specialists have argued that

the weaving scenes represent the passage of time or

fate and that ﬁgures around the weavers can be in-

terpreted in terms of religious ritual. Scenes of

feasts, processions, hunting, athletic contests, and

marching troops have been understood to exempli-

fy ideas about community solidarity, fertility, death,

and rebirth.

Ritual.

In the hilly and mountainous regions of

east-central Europe, many sites have been discov-

ered at which ritual deposits were made during the

Early Iron Age. The practice of placing, dropping,

and throwing valued objects into special natural

places—springs, ponds, rivers, caves, clefts in cliff

faces—as offerings to deities has been done from

Upper Palaeolithic times to the modern day. Partic-

ular kinds of locations and speciﬁc types of objects

are favored in different contexts. Many hilltops in

east-central Europe apparently were used as places

for ritual practice, such as the site of Burkovak, near

Písek in Bohemia, where ﬁgurines of animals and

humans, wheel-shaped clay objects, and pottery

have been found in pits. The hilltop at Závist may

be another ritual place.

Caves often were used for ritual practice.

Bronze jewelry items were particularly common as

ritual deposits in caves. Other objects recovered in

such contexts comprise tools and weapons, pottery,

and human and animal remains. In some caves, evi-

dence of human sacriﬁce has been identiﬁed.

Among the best-known sites is the cave at By´cˇí skála

in Moravia, where quantities of materials of varied

character were deposited at the end of the Early

Iron Age. Personal ornaments of types worn by

both men and women were abundant. Weapons

were well represented, including daggers, axes,

lances, helmets, cuirasses, and arrows. Blacksmiths’

tools and ﬁttings from horse harnesses also were

present. Fragments of wagons were recovered as

well. Bones of cattle, pigs, sheep, and horses were

found, as were skeletal remains of men, women, and

children, representing at least thirty-seven individu-

als. Pottery vessels and large bronze containers asso-

ciated with feasting were part of the assemblage.

Among the materials recovered were knives, spindle

whorls, harvesting tools, and cereal grains. The as-

semblage from By´cˇí skála was removed from the

cave in the nineteenth century, and we lack good in-

formation about the arrangement of the objects

when they were discovered. The different categories

of objects found in the cave, however, match those

from later, well-documented sites that have ritual

associations.

MIDDLE IRON AGE (450–200

B.C.

)

The style of ornament known as La Tène, devel-

oped in the Rhineland in the early part of the ﬁfth

century

B.C., appeared in east-central Europe in

about the middle of that century. Among the earli-

est expressions of this new style in the region are ﬁb-

ulae—brooches that work mechanically like modern

safety pins—ornamented with human, bird, and

mammal heads, a form particularly well represented

in Bohemia. From the end of the ﬁfth century

B.C.

onward, La Tène style, with its curvilinear ornament

and stylized animal and human ﬁgures, also is seen

engraved and incised on weapons, pottery, and

other objects. The new style most often is seen on

objects associated with elites, in wealthy burials. In

some regions, such as Bohemia, there were groups

of unusually rich graves, such as those excavated at

Chlum, Hradisˇte˘, Písek, and Prague-Modrany. At

Chlum a dead man was buried within a chamber

built of stone, covered by a burial mound. Grave

6: THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

298

ANCIENT EUROPE

goods included an imported Etruscan bronze jug,

two Greek wine cups, a sword, an axe, a knife, and

personal ornaments of gold, silver, and bronze.

New Burial Practices.

During the late ﬁfth and

fourth centuries

B.C., burial practice changed in

most parts of east-central Europe, from mound

burial to inhumation in ﬂat graves. In many ceme-

teries, graves generally are well outﬁtted. Often

about half of the men’s graves contain sets of iron

weapons, including sword, lance, and shield (wood

with iron rim). Women’s graves characteristically

contain bronze and iron jewelry—often complete

sets with neck ring, two bracelets, sometimes two

leg rings, and several ﬁbulae. Ceramic and, more

rarely, bronze vessels occasionally accompany the

other grave goods. Burial practices varied somewhat

in different regions, but in broad outline the similar-

ities are striking. Among well-documented ceme-

teries of this period are Bucˇany in western Slovakia,

Jászberény-Csero˝halom in Hungary, Brezˇice in Slo-

venia, Karaburma near Belgrade in Serbia, and

Jenisˇu˚v Újezd in Bohemia. One study of several

cemeteries in Bohemia found that in those commu-

nities, life expectancy for men was forty-two years,

and for women it was thirty-eight. Communities

were small—individual farmsteads or very small vil-

lages, rarely with more than ﬁfty people per settle-

ment. The spread of La Tène style and the adoption

of these common burial practices often have been

attributed to migrations of Celts from the Rhine-

land. Modern understanding of the nature of group

identity and of the meaning of the name “Celts,”

however, makes this mechanism of dispersion un-

likely. More probably, the new stylistic fashion and

burial practice spread because they ﬁlled speciﬁc so-

cial and cultural needs of communities throughout

much of Europe.

At the same time that the burial practice

changed from tumulus burial to ﬂat grave inhuma-

tion, the great majority of the fortiﬁed hilltop settle-

ments were abandoned. People who had resided in

them moved down into the lower lands. A dispersed

settlement pattern characterized the cultural land-

scape, in contrast to the centralized system based on

the hillforts that had dominated many regions dur-

ing the Early Iron Age. The lavish gold ornaments

and ornate bronze vessels from the Mediterranean

world were no longer buried with elite individuals,

yet differences in burial wealth continued to be sig-

niﬁcant. In the great ﬂat-grave cemeteries, wealth

differences between rich and poor graves are subtler

than in those from the Early Iron Age, but they are

nonetheless evident. Special status is apparent in

some men’s graves that contain sets of weapons,

with swords and scabbards sometimes bearing spe-

cial ornament. Such ornamentation is especially

common in the Carpathian Basin, where opposed

pairs of dragons incised on the upper part of scab-

bards was a special symbol of the warrior elite. Scab-

bard decoration known as the “Hungarian sword

style” appears throughout much of temperate Eu-

rope, from England to Romania.

Settlement.

Settlements of this period typically

were farms and small villages, such as one excavated

at Radovesice in Bohemia. Agriculture and crafts

were practiced to satisfy the needs of the resident

community, with little apparent surplus production

for trade. Major centers, such as those of the Early

Iron Age, have not been identiﬁed for this period,

but some specialized production places focused on

the extraction of speciﬁc resources. At Msec in Bo-

hemia a center of large-scale iron production has

been identiﬁed, and at Lovosice there is a center for

the quarrying of porphyry for making grindstones.

Ritual.

During the middle part of the Iron Age,

deposits of valuable objects in water best represent-

ed ritual practice. At Duchcov in northwest Bohe-

mia, a bronze cauldron was found in a spring with

a large number of bronze ornaments in it. They in-

cluded some 850 ﬁbulae, 650 bracelets, and 100

ﬁnger rings. Estimates place the original total num-

ber of objects at about 2,500. The site was discov-

ered in 1882 during construction work, and many

of the objects were dispersed without record. A

complex interpreted as a ritual enclosure has been

identiﬁed at Libenice, also in Bohemia. A ditch en-

closed a long, thin rectangle of land; in the middle

of it was a single burial, with a large stone set into

the ground nearby.

LATE IRON AGE (200

B.C.

TO THE

ROMAN CONQUEST)

In the ﬁnal centuries of the Iron Age, communities

larger and more complex than any earlier ones de-

veloped throughout much of temperate Europe.

Oppida.

The ﬁnal phase of the prehistoric Iron Age

in east-central Europe and as far west as France is

IRON AGE EAST-CENTRAL EUROPE

ANCIENT EUROPE

299