Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

discovering the scythians
the observation that the mound was built largely of turves cut from the steppe. The
excavators estimated that to build Chertomlÿk would have required the stripping of
75 hectares of grassland—a colossal input of labour. What did such an act imply?
Clearly it expressed the power of the dead men’s lineage to coerce labour, but was it
symbolic of his pasture in the other world? (See below, pp. 304–5.)
While these large set-piece excavations were going on less dramatic work
was in progress as new infrastructure projects threatened to destroy or damage
archaeological sites. One irrigation project in Ukraine in 1960–1 alone required the
examination of a hundred kurgans. Nor were settlements neglected. As a nomadic
people the Scythians had left little trace of permanent settlement but it has long been
known that some very large defended enclosures (gorodišče) found in the steppe zone
and forest steppe were occupied in the Scythian period. One, at Kamenskoe on the
Lower Dnieper, was intermittently excavated between 1937 and 1950. It covers some
12 sq km and the excavations show that the occupants were heavily involved in iron
production. An even larger enclosure at Bel’sk on the River Vorskla, a tributary of
the Dnieper, extended to some 35 sq km. Excavation began in 1958, and since 1992 the
work has been carried out by a Ukrainian–German team. Occupation lasted from
the seventh to the third century bc, during which time the occupants were engaged in
producing a wide range of commodities. It is also highly likely that the Scythian elite
resided there for at least part of the year. These gorodišče raise many questions about
the workings of Scythian society to which we will return (pp. 129–35).
Far to the East
Great excitement had been generated by the remarkable array of finds from frozen
tombs excavated in the Altai at Pazyryk and elsewhere, not only because of the excellent
preservation of the organic items but also because of the cultural implications of
the finds. It was clear for all to see that the belief systems displayed by the Altai burial
rituals and the energetic animal art enlivening objects of everyday use bore striking
resemblances to those of the Scythians living on the Pontic steppe—so similar
that archaeologists began to accept a close link between them, some referring to a
ÂScythian–Siberian cultural continuum stretching across 3,500 km of steppe.
Much further to the east, in the Minusinsk Basin and the Tuva region of the Sayan
Mountains—regions linked together by the north-flowing Yenisei River—discoveries
of prehistoric nomadic culture, mainly from burials, were prompting further
speculation. In the Minusinsk Basin—an expanse of rich steppe surrounded by high
mountains—it was possible to trace an unbroken cultural tradition extending from
the middle of the second millennium to the late first millennium bc, rooted in the
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