Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

discovering the scythians
N
Chulym
Kurgan cemeteries
modern city
Yenisei
Ob’
Tomsk
Novosibirsk
Krasnoyarsk
E astern Sayan Mts
Barnaul
Biya
Minusinsk
Irtysh
Shibe
Western
Pazyryk
S ayan
Mts
Arzhan
Yenisei
Berel
Ak Alakha
A l t
Lake
Zaysan
a i M t
s
0 100 miles
0 200km
1.14 The Altai–Sayan Mountains were the home of nomadic pastoralists and the region has produced
many burials of the Scythian period. A number of them were exceptionally well preserved by permafrost
(the freezing of the ground beneath the mound) which has ensured that the organic component of the
deposit has not decayed.
an astonishing series of discoveries throwing entirely new light on nomadic life in the
late first millennium bc. Coming at the time when the kurgans of the Pontic steppe
were beginning to be explored, it provided a stark reminder of the vast area across
which nomadic animal art had once extended, raising many questions, not least how
the remarkable cultural connectivity which must have existed throughout the steppe
related to the movements of people.
Surprisingly, it was not until the 1920s that Radlov’s discoveries were followed up,
when a new expedition from the Archaeological Section of the Russian Museum at
Leningrad (as St Petersburg was renamed after the Revolution), under the leadership
of Sergei Rudenko (1885–1969), was sent to make an archaeological survey of the High
17