Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

predatory nomads
ies which concentrate in the valley of the Tisza River and its tributaries. Unlike the
preceding Bronze Age communities who cremated their dead, the Mezöcsát people
practised inhumation in small cemeteries, the bodies usually being laid out in a west–
east orientation, accompanied by a large pot and a cup or bowl and joints of meat,
usually mutton or beef. Other small items of personal equipment were sometimes
included, but never weapons. The lack of settlements suggests that communities
were mobile pastoral nomads relying largely on their flocks and herds, but the presence
of quernstones in some graves shows that grain-growing was practised, though
probably on a limited scale. The Mezöcsát group is of particular interest in that it
marks a cultural break from what had gone before and could represent communities
of horse-riding pastoralists coming from the east, either across the Carpathians or by
way of the lower Danube valley. If so, that the earliest dates for the Mezöcsát group in
Hungary are ninth–eighth century would suggest that the incomers were part of the
initial spread from the Altai–Sayan rather than refugees driven west by the Scythians.
That said, it may have taken several generations for people to move from the Pontic
steppe to the Hungarian puszta, their culture being modified over that time. Some
such explanation would account for the fact that the burial of weapons with the dead,
normal in the east, was no longer practised west of the Carpathians.
Once established the Mezöcsát pastoralists seem to have played a significant role
in the exchange systems which provided steppe horses and their harnesses, together
with high-status equipment like daggers, for the Hallstatt elites of middle Europe.
Exchanges could account for the distribution of eastern-style horse gear and bimetallic
daggers extending west of the Danube where it flows through Hungary, dividing
the steppe of the Great Hungarian Plain from the more varied landscapes of Transdanubia.
In the west the high-quality steppe horses and the elite panoply accompanying
them were absorbed into the local Hallstatt culture, with the horse gear being
modified, where necessary, to meet local needs.
A good example of this cultural conflation is represented in a cremation burial
found at Pécs-Jakabhegy in south-western Hungary. The burial in tumulus 1 was one
of a number of cremations extending along a track leading to a hillfort. The deceased’s
ashes were buried with a Caucasian dagger and an iron spearhead and axe, both of
Caucasian type, together with horse gear inspired by eastern examples but made
locally. His iron knife, whetstone, and accompanying pottery were all in the local
Hallstatt tradition. Here, then, we have a member of the indigenous Hallstatt elite
whose mode of burial was entirely according to local traditions but whose weapon set
came from the Caucasus. He probably rode a steppe breed of horse harnessed in the
eastern manner. By accepting the style of eastern nomadic warriors, and by acquiring
the appropriate equipment, he was demonstrating his exalted status to his peers.
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