Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

predatory nomads
resource, the greater its power. The burial ceremonies were occasions to restate alliances.
But they were also times when aspiring leaders could proclaim intended expeditions
and exploits to outshine the achievements of the deceased. It was in this way
that ambition escalated and the horde was spurred on to greater mobility.
Meanwhile on the Pontic Steppe …
We saw in the previous chapter how the Pontic, Caspian, and Kazakh steppe began
to experience a more arid climate from the beginning of the eleventh century bc
and how, in the region between the Don and the Danube, populations seem to have
declined as communities began to concentrate in the well-watered river valleys,
where cattle breeding and agriculture could be practised, leaving the open steppe for
more sporadic seasonal pastoralism. Those communities living in the Pontic region
in the eleventh and tenth centuries are referred to archaeologically as the Belozerka
culture and are believed to have developed from the preceding Late Bronze Age
cultures.
At the end of the tenth or early in the ninth century bc it is possible to recognize
a distinct cultural change that heralds the beginning of the Chernogorovka culture,
which dates to c. 900–750 bc. This develops into the Novocherkassk culture, which
probably lasts to the middle of the seventh century. The distinction between the two
is based largely on changing styles of horse gear. Some archaeologists have argued
that the two ‘cultures’ were broadly contemporary and that the stylistic differences
in their artefact sets reflect differences in status or ethnicity, but recent work has suggested
that they are broadly different phases in cultural development with only a
slight chronological overlap. What all agree is that these archaeologically defined cultures
are pre-Scythian, that is, they represent a significant development of the Pontic
steppe communities before the arrival of the historically attested Scythians in the
second half of the seventh century. As we have seen (above, pp. 30–1) the classical
sources refer to those who inhabited the Pontic steppe before the arrival of the Scythians
as Kimmerians. If we accept the generalization that the Chernogorovka and
Novocherkassk cultures are the archaeological manifestation of the Kimmerians,
two questions then arise: do the cultural changes which characterize the beginning
of the Chernogorovka culture mark the influx of the Kimmerians and, if so, where
did these people come from?
Archaeological evidence can seldom provide precise answers to questions of
this kind but a careful analysis of material finds and of the behaviour patterns preserved
in burials allows three distinct cultural threads to be distinguished. That
there is a strong indigenous tradition rooted in the Belozerka culture need occa-
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