Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

the rise of the pontic steppe scythians
well as a good crop of slaves generated by local wars and augmented by organized
slave raiding if the price was right. The growth of these forest steppe fortified markets
in the sixth and fifth centuries bc is nicely paralleled in western Europe by the growth
of oppida in the second and first century bc encouraged by the consumer demand of
the Roman world.
Herodotus was well aware of great markets of this kind. In describing the Bundi,
one of the tribes on the northern edge of the Scythian zone, he says:
There is a city in their territory called Gelonus, which is surrounded with a lofty wall
thirty furlongs each way built entirely of wood. All the houses in the place and all the
temples are in the same material. Here are temples built in honour of the Greek gods
and adorned after the Greek fashion with images, altars, and shrines all in wood. There
is even a festival held every third year in honour of Bacchus at which the natives fall into
a Bacchic fury. For the fact is that the Geloni were originally Greek who, being driven
out of the trading centres along the coast, fled to the Budini and lived with them. They
still speak a language half Greek, half Scythian.
(Hist. iv. 108)
Gelonus, known to Herodotus through hearsay, was evidently a very large site,
though not apparently as large as Bel’sk. The presence of Greeks, or people of Greek
ancestry, implies that there were resident middlemen who helped articulate the
trade. Herodotus’ narrative also conjures up the image of the natives eagerly awaiting
the arrival of the next consignment of wine—an occasion for celebration. Some
archaeologists have argued that Bel’sk was Gelonus. It could be, but the number of
trading centres of this kind scattered along the edge of the forest steppe makes positive
identification impossible.
The Presence of Kings
Implicit in the discussion so far has been the existence of a powerful elite dominating
all aspects of Scythian life. That such people existed is amply demonstrated by many
rich burials, usually marked by large mounds, found scattered across both the steppe
and the forest steppe. Among the many thousands of Scythian burials known, about
3,000 have been subjected to some kind of excavation since the eighteenth century,
though the standards of recovery and recording have varied considerably. Most had
been dug into by tomb robbers in the distant past, but even so the quantity of information
they have provided allows belief systems, social hierarchies, and changes in
burial ritual to be considered in some detail. Our understanding of belief systems is
also greatly enhanced by Herodotus’ famous description of highly complex burial
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