Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

scythians in central asia
nomads tend to be transient and hard to identify. Nor do they promise the spectacular
results that have attracted excavators to the kurgans.
The considerable variation in landscapes across Central Asia led to the development
of many different food-producing strategies to sustain the population. The great
expanses of open steppe grassland crossed by rivers occupied much of the region but
around the edges there was more variety to be had. The desert edge where the Amu
Darya and Syr Darya once flowed into the Aral and Caspian seas was a deltaic area of rich
soil encouraging more permanent settlement. Similarly, the Semirechye, or Seven Rivers,
region of southern Kazakhstan offered an unusually rich environment where the
rivers flowing from the Tian Shan Mountains into Lake Balkhash deposited rich alluvial
fans along their courses. Very different were the gold-yielding Altai Mountains, with
the upland grasslands and alpine meadows offering all-year-round pasture for flocks
and herds. In such varying environments communities developed in different ways but
they shared a social system in which aristocratic elites exercised power over extensive
regions through their control of tight-knit units of armed cavalry and were able to set
up alliances with similar elites, often across great distances. It was this ever-changing
world glimpsed at a distance that the classical writers attempted to comprehend.
The Stags of Filippovka: Between East and West
The narrow corridor of steppe that lay between the
desert around the north side of the Caspian and the
southern end of the Ural Mountains was a favoured
area. Not only was it good grassland, well-watered
by major rivers like the River Ural and its tributaries,
but those who commanded it controlled the flow of
goods from east to west. This was the homeland of the
Samara-Ural culture from which the Sarmatians were
to emerge. Many kurgan cemeteries are known in the
region, but most of the more impressive mounds have
been dug into by grave robbers in the past.
One of the more rewarding of recent excavations
was carried out between 1986 and 1990 near the village
of Filippovka on the watershed between the River Ural
and its tributary, the Ilek. The cemetery is composed
of twenty-five kurgans spread in a sinuous line over
about 5 km. The individual mounds varied considerably
in size: kurgans 1, 3, and 4 were 6 to 7 m high and
0 6 M
Kurgan 1
Kurgan 7
Kurgan 4
7.6 Plans of kurgans from the cemetery of Filippovka, Kazakhstan.
Each had an entrance passage leading to the burial
7.6
chamber.
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