Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

crossing the carpathians
nomads would have intermarried with the local population and maintained contact
with their eastern homeland through the exchange of goods. From time to time they
may also have hosted (or repelled) incoming bands of young warriors arriving from
the Pontic region in search of excitement and quick rewards.
Relations with the West
Throughout the period from the ninth to the fifth centuries the Danube formed a
cultural frontier between the nomadic-based communities of the Mezöcsát and Vekerzug
cultures to the east and the Hallstatt culture of western Central Europe to the
west. The Carpathian range discouraged contact between the nomads and the farming
communities of the North European Plain.
The distribution of Scythian material, mainly arrows and horse gear, in the middle
Danube valley, in Transdanubia, and right up to the flanks of the eastern Alps
show that contact must have been maintained between the nomads and the Hallstatt
world. The most likely mechanism would have been trade. What the nomadic
communities had to offer were sturdy riding horses, larger and more robust than
those native to Western Europe. These well-trained horses with their riding tackle
would have been avidly sought by the Hallstatt elites. It may even be that from time to
time they employed bands of horse-riding mercenaries—this could account for the
large number of arrows found. In return for horses and services the nomads would
probably have received grain as a welcome addition to their diet. Mutually beneficial
exchanges of this kind would have encouraged a relatively peaceful symbiosis. Yet the
temptation for the nomad bands to raid the sedentary Hallstatt farmers was ever present
and sporadic raids could account for at least some of the scattered arrowheads
found in Transdanubia.
One unusually dense concentration of Scythian-style artefacts stands out: it
focuses on the upper valley of the Sava river in what is now Slovenia. The finds, predominantly
military gear, including arrowheads, battleaxes, and spearheads together
with horse trappings, are found in inhumation graves, which sometimes also contain
horse skeletons. Superficially it looks as though these may have been the graves of
warriors coming from out of the Great Hungarian Plain but other possibilities must
be considered. The upper Sava region is crucially sited on an important route which
provides access between the greater Danube river system and the head of the Adriatic
linking directly to the Mediterranean. Already by the seventh century trading ties
were developing across the 80 km or so that separates the two systems, and with the
establishment of two trading colonies, Spina and Adria in the Po delta, trade intensi-
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