Kyiv. 2014. 180 p.

A richly illustrated book devoted to the Scythian period antiquities from the territory of Crimea has been published in Kiev. The collection of magnificent items of the "Scythian triad" in the amount of 400 items (weapons, horse equipment and animal-style products) comes from random finds of "search engines" using metal detectors in different years and was initially at the disposal of several private owners. Later, these items were purchased and transferred to the Museum of the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, where they were thoroughly analyzed and restored. One of the leading Scythologists of Ukraine, Head of the Early Iron Age Department of the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine S. A. Skoryi and his assistant R. V. Zimovets prepared an impressive catalog of Scythian antiquities from the still poorly studied region of Southeastern Crimea, which almost doubled the number of previously known items of Scythian weapons and horse harness in zoomorphic design from the peninsula. The main part of the collection consists of items of the VII-IV centuries BC. And although almost all of them are random finds, a significant part of them was reliably "tied" to more than 60 specific localities and localities.

What is new for Crimean Scythian studies in this collection? First, a number of published (in the form of a catalog) weapons items (a bimetallic sword, bronze arrowheads of the "Jabotinsky" type) reliably date back to the archaic period in the history of Scythia: VII-first half of the VI century BC. mainly items of horse equipment made of bronze: nanos, napps, badges-ornaments of the bridle). So far, the number of such finds on the territory of Crimea has been relatively small. Third, traces of defects (sprues) on some arrowheads and objects of horse bridles in animal style prove their manufacture on the spot, on the Crimean land. And fourthly, the items of this collection find analogies both in Black Sea Scythia and in rather distant territories from Central Europe to Southern Siberia, which indicates extensive trade, cultural and political ties of the Crimean population with the rest of Scythia, especially in the V-IV centuries BC.

Below, I would like to mention a few important points concerning the content of the book under review. First of all, from the brief historiographical introduction to the "Scythian Antiquities of the Crimea" (p.9-16), it follows that great attention has always been paid to the monuments of the Scythian era on the Crimean Peninsula in Russian archaeological science. Archaeological culture, whose creators can be confidently considered nomadic and semi-nomadic pastoral tribes, called Scythians by Greek authors, appeared in the Crimea at least from the VII century BC. e.; its flourishing in this region occurred in the V-IV centuries BC. e.; and finally it disappeared from the historical arena in the III century AD. e. Thus, the Scythians lived on the peninsula for about a thousand years and left numerous material traces in the form of burials (mounds) and settlements.

As soon as the Crimea was annexed to the Russian Empire at the end of the 18th century after the successful wars of the Russian troops with the Turks and Tatars, the study of its numerous and diverse antiquities of various epochs immediately began. It can also be argued that it was after the discovery of the richest burial of the Scythian king (IV century BC) in the stone tomb of the Kul-Oba mound near Kerch in 1830 that the authorities, scientists and the public of the country developed an increased interest in the graves of the Scythian era. Since then, hundreds of mounds and dozens of ancient settlements have been studied. However, there are still quite enough unresolved issues in the archaeology of the Scythian era for the Crimean territory. That is why the introduction of a new large collection of Scythian items from the Crimea into scientific circulation can only be welcomed.

In addition to a significant number of weapons of the VII-IV centuries BC (a total of 189 finds of swords, daggers, spearheads, javelins and arrows), special attention is drawn in this collection of metal products decorated in the animal style (205 copies). They

GULYAEV Valery Ivanovich-Doctor of Historical Sciences, Chief Researcher of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences; viguliaev@yandex.ru.

We have almost doubled the total volume of works of Scythian art found on the peninsula and known to specialists, and significantly expanded our understanding of the general nature and features of the culture of local tribes. Researchers were waiting for a lot of surprises here. For example, a big surprise was the appearance in the collection from the Crimea of two bronze plaques with images of the heads of bears full-face in a sacrificial pose ( the head lying on two front paws) - N 340 and N 341.

Until recently, the bear motif in Scythian animal art was generally considered an exotic exception, accidentally introduced to the land of Scythia through the mediation of sauromats from the area of cultures of the forest zone of the Urals, primarily from the Ananyin culture of the Kama region. However, the archaeological findings of recent years completely refute this. Claws and fangs of the beast, which served as amulets and amulets, were found in a number of Scythian mounds of the steppe and forest-steppe. Images of a bear in metal products made of bronze, iron and gold, whether they are whole figures or so-called bear paws, are known practically throughout the territory of Scythia (Gulyaev, 2012, pp. 166-184).

The image of a bear in the "sacrificial pose" is known in the art of Scythian tribes as early as the fifth century BC: a golden plaque from mound No. 402 in Zhurovka village, b. Chigirinsky uyezd, b. Kiev province in the Dnieper forest-steppe [Bobrinsky, 1905, p. 20, fig. 50], two bronze plaques of a horse's bridle from mound No. 11 near the village of Olefirshchyna in the Poltava region, between the Vorskla and Pela rivers (Kulatova, Lugovaya, Suprunenko, 1993, p. 23, Fig. 9, 7-8). This is also the Dnieper forest-steppe, but already on the Left bank. Both named mound complexes belong to the 5th century BC.

Two bronze plaques with the image of a bear's head in a "sacrificial pose" were found under random circumstances in the Crimea: one near the village of Batalnoye on the Kerch Peninsula, the other somewhere in the south - eastern part of the Crimean Peninsula (the exact location of the find is unknown). Both subjects, based on the existing analogies, date back to the second half of the fifth century BC (p. 115, N 44/340 and N 45/341).

Thus, the Scythians who lived in the Crimea sensitively perceived and reflected in their art all the trends that existed in the Northern Black Sea region, including the most exotic ones - in the form of an image of a bear in a "sacrificial pose". The fact that this was not an exception, an isolated case, is also indicated by the abundance of finds on the peninsula of bronze horse bridle ornaments in the form of "bear paws" (pp. 125-127, N 66/362; 67/363; 68/364, 71/367-76/372), which are so rich in the Scythian Dnieper forest-steppe (Mogilov, 2008, p. 322, fig. 103].

No less interesting is that in the Scythian antiquities of the Crimea, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic metal hook-fasteners are presented in only six copies. The intrigue is that in steppe Scythia there are no such hooks-fasteners, except for the gold and silver hooks with deer figures from the mound of the "royal" Alexandropol mound in the Lower Dnieper region.

Anthropomorphic bronze clasps in the form of galloping Scythian horsemen were found: one in the Petrovskaya (Dog) gully near Simferopol (1889), the other in the Kubalach mountain range between the villages of Sennoye and Divnoye in the Belogorsky district (2010) (pp. 54-55, N 1/185) [Veselovsky, 1891, pp. 81-83]. Buckles with the image of a galloping horseman are found so far only in the Crimea and are truly unique for Scythia, which may indicate their local, Crimean production. As the authors of the reviewed book emphasize, "apparently, such belt buckles were socially prestigious indicators of a certain group of the Scythian army" (p. 116).

From the territory of the Crimea, other metal zoomorphic hooks-fasteners that have a different origin are also known. We are talking primarily about a bronze product with the figure of a horse at the wide end and the head of a griffin at the narrow end (N 189 collection). There are no analogies to it in Scythia, although many compositionally similar items can be found there [Gulyaev, 1969, p. 116, Fig. 7]. No less interesting is a bronze hook with a figure of a reclining deer and a stylized head of a long-eared bird of prey (griffin) on a narrow end-rod, found in mound No. 5 in the Novoaleksandrovka-Bogachevka mound group in Prisivashye (Koltukhov, 2012, p. 137, Fig. 28: 21). And finally, an iron buckle with a gold lining in the form of a bird with open wings, found back in the XIX century in the Ak-Burun mound near Kerch [UAC for 1875, p. 5, Tables XXXIII-XXXIV]. There are quite a lot of analogies to things with deer and birds in Scythian art, especially on the Middle Don [Gulyaev, 2001, p. 51, 1-2; Savchenko, 2001, p. 90, figs. 26, 12].

This allowed the authors of the book to make the following conclusion: "These hooks-fasteners are either imported products from the Crimean Scythians-from the Middle Don region,

or they reflect a certain fashion for such details of military equipment, which was manifested in the local Scythian environment under the influence of northern cultural impulses " (p. 147).

If we talk about the animal style motifs presented in the collection, then there are all three common Scythian groups of images of animals and birds: birds of prey and griffins have 47 specimens, ungulates of herbivores (deer, elk, horses, wild boars, sheep, bulls, mountain goats, hares, etc.) - 54 specimens, and predators (in mostly feline) - 33 copies (pp. 151-153). Among the ungulates of herbivores, the abundance of moose images is striking (about 1/3 of the entire herbivore collection) - an animal that is far from southern and is usually considered a representative only of the fauna of forest and forest-steppe regions.

"...At the same time, the presence of such a selection of moose from the South-Eastern Crimea casts doubt on one of the authoritative points of view (it is held by B. A. Shramko, P. D. Liberov, A. I. Shkurko, etc. - V. G.) about the local features of the Scythian animal style, associated with the idea of a specific reflection of the local fauna in it (my italics - V. G.). It seemed quite logical that the repertoire of images of the animal style of forest-steppe tribes should differ significantly from the repertoire of steppe Scythians. However, the presence of such "northern" images as deer and, especially, elk in the Crimean Scythians... it does not allow us to consider such an approach legitimate " (p. 155).

Summing up the results of the review of the repertoire of zoomorphic images from the territory of Crimea, the authors of the reviewed monograph emphasize the existence of analogies to them in wide areas of the Scythian world-from the Black Sea coast to Central Asia and Southern Siberia. However, the most significant parallels are with the subjects of the Left-bank and Right-bank forest-steppe, Steppe, Kuban and North Caucasus.

"The presence of such images in Crimea, on the one hand, may indicate the developed contacts of the population of this territory with various Scythian tribes, as well as the importance of the Crimea as a kind of crossroads of ancient paths. On the other hand, and I am more inclined to this conclusion, this may indicate the unity of the repertoire and iconographic "core" of Scythian zoomorphic art of the end of the VI-first half of the IV century BC, which is manifested in different regions. Without denying the local specificity of the animal style in certain territories, which begins to manifest itself from the fifth century BC, one can observe an impressive number of images that are identical not only in iconography, but also in stylistics for various territories of Scythia..." (p.162).

Equally important is the conclusion that the first wave of Asian nomads-carriers of the oldest Scythian culture-came to the Crimean Peninsula no later than the beginning of the 7th century BC, not only from the north - from the Black Sea steppe, but also from the south from the Kuban region and the North Caucasus (given the geographical proximity of the Crimea and the Kuban region).

In short, there is confidence that the work of S. A. Skorogo and R. V. Zimovets, which is beautifully published and rich in factual material from areas of Crimea that were previously almost not represented in archeology, will be received with interest by the community of domestic and foreign Scythologists.

list of literature

Bobrinsky A. A. Report on excavations made in 1903 in the Chigirinsky uyezd of the Kiev province / / Izvestiya Imperatorskoy Arkheologicheskoi Komissii. Issue No. 14. St. Petersburg, 1905.

Vasiliev St. A. Ananyinsky animal style. Istoki, osnovnye komponenty i razvitie [Sources, main components and development]. St. Petersburg, 2004. N 11.

Veselovsky N. I. Scythian Horseman / / Izvestiya Tavricheskoy Uchenoy Archivnoy Komissii. N 140. Simferopol, 1891.

Gulyaev V. I. Zoomorphic hooks of the Scythian period / / Population of the Middle Don in the Scythian time. Moscow, 1969.

Gulyaev V. I. Obshchie problemy arkheologii Srednego Dona scifskogo vremeni [General problems of archeology of the Middle Don in the Scythian era]. Proceedings of the Potudan Archaeological Expedition of the IA RAS, 1993-2000. Moscow, 2001.

Gulyaev V. I. Motif of the bear in the art of the population of Eurasia in the Scythian era / / Archeology of Moscow-liniya zhizni. Collection of articles and materials in connection with the 80th anniversary of A. G. Veksler, Moscow, 2012.

Koltukhov S. G. Scythians of the North-Western Crimea in the VII-IV centuries BC (funeral monuments) / / Archaeological Almanac. N 27. Donetsk, 2012.

Kulatova I. N., Lugovaya L. N., Suprunenko A. B. Kurgans of the Scythian period between the Vorskla and Psla rivers. Moscow, Poltava, 1993.

Liberov P. D. Ancient history of the population of the Don region. Author's abstract. diss. ... Doctor of Historical Sciences, Moscow, 1971.

Могилов О. Д. Спорядження коня скіфської доби у Лісостепу Східної Европи. Київ Кам'янець-Подільський, 2008.

UAC for 1875 (Report of the Imperial Archaeological Commission for 1875). St. Petersburg, 1876.

Savchenko E. I. Mogilnik skifskogo vremeni Ternovoe I - Kolbino I na Srednego Donu (pogrebal'nyj obryad) [Burial ground of the Scythian period Ternovoe I-Kolbino I on the Middle Don (funeral rite)]. Proceedings of the Potudan Archaeological Expedition of the IA RAS, 1993-2000. Moscow, 2001.

Permanent link to this publication: