About the Book
Masters of the Steppe: the impact of the Scythians and later nomad societies of Eurasia consists of 45 papers presented at a major international conference held at the British Museum in 2017 on the occasion of the BP exhibition Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia, both conference and exhibition being jointly organised with the State Hermitage Museum. There are 58 contributors and co-authors from 16 countries, mostly from Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, but also America, Britain, France, Germany, China and Mongolia. The papers range from new archaeological discoveries, results of scientific research and studies of museum collections to reconstructions of social elites, the phenomenon of monumental tomb construction, and ‘Animal Style’ art. Most results are presented for the first time in the English language and they throw a completely new light on a huge range of aspects of the lives of Scythians and other ancient nomads of Eurasia, their horses, rock art and the working of precious metals, textiles and other materials.
Table of Contents:
Foreword – Hartwig Fischer ;
Foreword – Mikhail Piotrovsky ;
Preface and acknowledgements – Svetlana V. Pankova, St John Simpson ;
Introduction ;
The Sasanian and Gupta empires and their struggle against the Huns – T. Bakker ;
Supersize me: political aspects of monumental tomb building in early steppe empires – Thomas J. Barfield ;
Saka ‘Animal Style’: the ‘mysterious picture’ on a carved bone container from central Kazakhstan – Arman Z. Beisenov ;
A Scythian treasure in the lands of the Getae: considerations regarding the hoard of Stâncești – Alexandru Berzovan ;
Interactions between mobile pastoralists and settled agricultural societies in central Asia: examples from the work of the Eurasia Department of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) – Nikolaus Boroffka ;
The Arzhan-2 ‘royal’ funerary-commemorative complex: stages of function and internal chronology – Konstantin V. Chugunov ;
Scythian archers of the 4th century BC: a new archaeological study of excavated bows, arrows and quivers from the northern Black Sea region – Marina Daragan ;
Fabergé and the gold making tradition in Russia – Caroline de Guitaut, LVO ;
Scythians, Persians, Greeks and horses: reflections on art, culture, power and empires in the light of frozen burials and other excavations – Henri-Paul Francfort ;
Textiles, dyes and pigments of the European Scythians: preliminary analyses of materials from southern Ukraine – Margarita Gleba, Ina Vanden Berghe, Marina Daragan ;
Scythian gold from 19th century private collections in the Department of the Ancient World in the State Hermitage Museum – O. Gorskaya ;
Scientific study of the etching process used on ancient carnelian beads – Clément Holé, Aude Mongiatti, St John Simpson ;
Trade, community and labour in the Pontic Iron Age forest-steppe region, c. 700–200 BC – James A. Johnson ;
The predator scene in Scythian ‘Animal Style’ as a socio-political indicator – Vladimir A. Kisel ;
‘Animal Style’ art: influences and traditions in the nomadic world – Elena Korolkova ;
To accompany and honour the deceased: the horses from the graves of the Pazyryk culture – Sébastien Lepetz, K. Debue, D. Batsukh ;
The royal *gaunaka: dress, identity, status and ceremony in Achaemenid Iran – Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones ;
Scythian archery – Mike Loades ;
A priestly burial from the Taksai-1 cemetery – Yana Lukpanova ;
The Okunev culture: a unique Siberian civilisation and its links with Scythian and later cultures – Leonid S. Marsadolov ;
Scientific analyses of some glass beads from Scythian and later sites in southern Siberia – Andrew Meek, Nikolai N. Nikolaev, St John Simpson ;
Petroglyphs of the Scythian period in the Oglakhty mountains (Republic of Khakassia, Russia): new materials and problems of attribution – Elena Miklashevich ;
Scythian and Sarmatian weapons with gold decoration – Raphael S. Minasyan ;
Gold of Peter the Great: Scythian goldsmithing techniques – Aude Mongiatti, Elena Korolkova ;
Life and death in the Scythian world of southern Siberia: a social bioarchaeological study of the mobile pastoralists from Aymyrlyg – Eileen Murphy, Yuri Chistov ;
Pazyryk horse masks of Gorny Altai – Maria Ochir–Goryaeva ;
Mummies and mannequins from the Oglakhty cemetery in southern Siberia – Svetlana V. Pankova ;
Textile finds from the central burials of the Arzhan-1 barrow in Tuva – Svetlana V. Pankova, Elena A. Mikolaychuk, Lyudmila S. Gavrilenko, Leonid S. Marsadolov ;
The Sarmatian conquest of the northern Pontic region: the state of the art of the problem – Sergei Polin ;
The royal Scythian Alexandropol kurgan based on new research data of 2004–2009 – Sergei Polin, Marina Daragan ;
New investigations of Scythian kurgans and their periphery in the lower Dnieper region: non-destructive measurements and archaeological proof – Sergej Polin, Marina Daragan, Kseniia Bondar ;
The formation of the early Scythian cultural complex of the Kelermes cemetery in the Kuban region of the north Caucasus – Tatyana V. Ryabkova ;
The results of new scientific analyses of gold bracelets from Taksai-1 and an iron sword from Issyk in the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan – A. K. Satubaldin, S. A. Yarygin, A. Mongiatti, D. O’Flynn, J. Lang ;
Secrets of Achaemenid production of personal ornaments and vessels – Ekaterina A. Shablavina ;
Jiang Yuan and north Chinese nomads – Daniil P. Shulga ;
Mysterious transformations of the Scythian cultures in the 6th and 3rd centuries BC – P. I. Shulga ;
Etched or bleached? Traded or copied? Comments on the dating and distribution of a distinctive type of decorated carnelian bead found from India to Eurasia from the early 1st millennium BC to the early medieval period – St John Simpson ;
In hoc signo vinces: the victory of the Scythians over the offspring of their slaves as a manifestation of divine providence (Herodotus, The Histories 4.1 [3], 3, 4) – Nikolay Yu. Smirnov ;
Testing Herodotus: leather species identification of Scythian quivers using new scientific methods – Luke Spindler, Margarita Gleba, Marina Daragan, Matthew Collins ;
Saddles of the Hun-Sarmatian period – Elena V. Stepanova ;
The wooden comb of the ‘golden lady’: a new battle image from the Taksai-1 kurgan (western Kazakhstan) – Lâtife Summerer, Yana Lukpanova ;
Finds from the Noin-Ula kurgans at an exhibition in Berlin in 1929 (based on materials from the archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of the History of Material Culture) – Natalia A. Sutiagina, Daria A. Kukina ;
The Scythian empire: reassessing steppe power from western and eastern perspectives – Timothy Taylor, Christine M. Havlicek, Christopher I. Beckwith ;
Antennae of Scythian akinakai: from abstraction to realism, there and back again – Denis Topal ;
Settled rather than saddled Scythians: the easternmost Sakas – Burzine Waghmar ;
‘Steppe Style’ in southeast Gansu province (China) in the 4th and 3rd centuries BC – Raphael Wong ;
Conclusions ;
Bibliography ;
Index
About the Author :
Svetlana Pankova is a senior researcher and curator of the Altai-Sayan collections in the Department of the Archaeology of Eastern Europe and Siberia in the State Hermitage Museum. Her main academic interests are sites from southern Siberia and central Asia with well-preserved organic materials dating from the 1st millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD.She was the lead Hermitage curator and co-editor of the catalogue for the BP exhibition Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia (2017/18). ;
St John Simpson is a senior curator in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum. He has excavated extensively in the Middle East but it was his first experience of travelling across central Asia in 1991 which led him to co-direct nine seasons of excavations at ancient Merv, in present-day Turkmenistan (1992–2000), and develop extensive relations there and in Russia. He was the lead British Museum curator and co-editor of the catalogue for the BP exhibition Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia (2017/18).
Review :
'The main content of the volume comprises some 44 papers based on contributions given at a conference held at the British Museum, 27-29 October 2017. As one would expect of a meeting of this kind, the papers, while relevant to the main conference theme, focus on specialist aspects. The contributions are written by experts and present new material and insights or make accessible data embedded in the more obscure literature. For these reasons, there is a great deal here that is new and exciting, particularly to a western audience—a sufficient reason in itself for supporting the publication.
But as everyone who has had to publish conference proceedings knows, the art lies in transforming what is essentially a collection of disparate, often narrowly focussed, papers into a cohesive volume. The editors have done this with considerable skill and success. All the papers have been translated into English, and they have undertaken the laborious task of compiling a single bibliography, which not only saves space but makes the volume much easier to use. They have also provided an Introduction (5400 words) and a Conclusions (13000 words), both substantial pieces of work, far more than conventional bookends.
The Introduction is a fascinating text in its own right. It sets the scene in a novel way by explaining the philosophy and the process that led to the mounting of the highly successful Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia exhibition. While this may be familiar ground for museum professionals, for the general reader, it introduces an intriguing new world, not least by explaining the creative decisions needed to make the exhibition the success that it was. The narrative style, in which the Introduction is presented, is a very effective way of leading the reader into the world of the Scythians.
The Conclusions is a triumph. It is, in effect, a long essay on the Scythians and their lifestyle with reference to the proceeding papers. It brings out what is new and how the subject is fast-changing, placing it within the broader context of what we already know. Footnotes, provide additional links to the published exhibition catalogue. The reader is left with an intimate picture of the Scythians. They emerge as real people, very different from us but well worth our attention and understanding.
This volume is a major achievement – it provides high-quality research within a context that is readily accessible. It is the kind of academic output one would like to see following other major exhibitions.' – Sir Barry Cunliffe, Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology, University of Oxford (2020)
'The gold of the Scythians exploded into the world of museum goers when Leningrad’s Hermitage Museum sent these treasures touring to London and New York in 1975. An equally noteworthy exhibition, Masters of the Steppe, took place in 2017 at the British Museum. This copiously-illustrated volume enables readers to revisit that exhibition, and to ponder essays produced by 30 scholars from 12 countries.' – David Chaffetz (2021), Asian Review of Books
'This compendium of 45 papers presented at an accompanying conference can be intermittently dry but remains far more than the sum of its parts – it is the most monumental English-language work in a generation to be dedicated to this fascinating civilization.' – Dennis Keen (2021), AramcoWorld
'Masters of the Steppe: the Impact of the Scythians and Later Nomad Societies of Eurasia is an impressive volume, bringing together a variety of new research and key summaries of scholarship. It is wonderfully illustrated, with over 600 images, allowing a rich window into the visual culture of these steppe pastoral communities.' – Robin Bendrey (2023): Pastoralism 13:2
