Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

further reading
116–47. The creation of the Hermitage is described in some detail by G. Norman in
The Hermitage: The Biography of a Great Museum (London, 1997). Of the early explorers
in Siberia, P. K. Frolov’s contribution is examined in N. Savel’ev, Petr Koz’mich Frolov
(in Russian ) (Novosibirsk, 1951) while that of D. G. Messerschmidt and G. F. Müller
is given extended treatment in chapters 3 and 4 of H. F. Vermeulen, Before Boas: The
Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment (Lincoln, Nebr., 2015).
For a brief biography of V. Radlov see J. P. Laut, ‘Radloff, Friedrich Wilhelm’, in Neue
Deutsche Biographie, 21 (2003) 96–7.
From the time of Catherine the Great (1729–1796), when the borders of Russia
expanded to the Black Sea, Scythian material has poured into museums at an increasing
rate, largely from the exploration of kurgans on the Pontic steppe. Brief overviews
of these discoveries are given in P. P. Tolochko and S. V. Polin, ‘Burial Mounds of the
Scythian Aristocracy in the Northern Black Sea Areas’, in E. D. Reeder (ed.), Scythian
Gold: Treasures from Ancient Ukraine (New York, 1999), 83–91 and St J. Simpson and S. V.
Pankova, ‘Introduction’, in St J. Simpson and S. Pankova, Scythians: Warriors of Ancient
Siberia (London, 2017), 10–15. A more extended treatment of some of the kurgans, putting
them in their historical context, is to be found in M. I. Artamonov, Treasures from
Scythian Tombs in the Hermitage Museum, Leningrad (London, 1969).
The early decades of the twentieth century saw the publication of two seminal
works, bringing together for the first time in readable compendia the considerable
body of data that had accumulated by the beginning of the twentieth century: E. H.
Minns, Scythians and Greeks: A Survey of Ancient History and Archaeology on the North Coast
of the Euxine (Cambridge, 1913) and M. Rostovtzeff, Iranians and Greeks in South Russia
(Oxford, 1922). The relationship of the two great contemporary scholars is examined
in G. Bongard-Levin, ‘E. H. Minns and M. I. Rostovtzeff: Glimpses of a Scythian
Friendship’, in D. Braund, Scythians and Greeks: Cultural Interactions in Scythia, Athens and
the Early Roman Empire (Sixth Century BC–First Century AD) (Exeter, 2005), 13–32.
Among the many spectacular discoveries of the twentieth century the frozen
tombs of Pazyryk must take pride of place. A full account by the excavator
S. I. Rudenko was published in Russian in 1953 by the Academy of Sciences of the
U.S.S.R. Fortunately for English readers it was translated by the British archaeologist
M. W. Thompson and published as S. I. Rudenko, Frozen Tombs of Siberia: The Pazyryk
Burials of Iron Age Horsemen (London, 1970). Although this is essentially a detailed
archaeological report, it is surprisingly readable and full of fascinating insights into
steppe culture. A much shorter introduction to the material is provided by the British
Museum catalogue, Frozen Tombs: The Culture and Art of the Ancient Tribes of Siberia
(London, 1978). The coverage is considerably extended in the more recent British
Museum exhibition catalogue, Simpson and Pankova, Scythians (cited above), which
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