Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

further reading
obryadnost’ naseleniya stepnoy Skifii (VII–III vv. do n.é.) (Burial and Wake Rites of the Population
of the Scythian Steppe (7th–3rd Centuries BC) ) (Moscow, 1991) and A. I. Alekseev
et al. (eds.), Élitnye kurgany stepeĭ Evrazii v skifo-sarmatskuiu épokhu (Elite Barrows of
the Eurasian Steppes during the Scytho-Sarmatian Period) (Moscow, 1994). A very
useful corpus of tombs is brought together in R. Rolle, Totenkult der Skythen, Teil 1:
Das Steppengebiet (Berlin, 1979). Symbolism inherent in tomb structure is explored in
M. Ochir-Goryaeva, ‘The Scythian Tombs: Construction and Geographical Orientation’,
European Journal of Archaeology, 18 (2015), 477–96.
The burials in the Altai–Sayan region are best approached through S. I. Rudenko,
Frozen Tombs of Siberia: The Pazyryk Burials of Iron Age Horsemen (London, 1970) and E. F.
Korolkova, ‘Death and Burial’, in St J. Simpson and S. Pankova (eds.), Scythians: Warriors
of Ancient Siberia (London, 2017), 256–75, which places the evidence from the frozen
tombs into its broader context.
For some recent publications of individual tombs see: R. Rolle, V. J. Murzin, and A.
J. Alekseev, Königskurgan Čertomlyk: Ein skythischer Gräbhugel des 4. vorschristlichen Jahrhunderts
(Mainz, 1998); A. P. Mantsevich, Kurgan Solokha (in Russian) (Leningrad, 1987); B.
M. Mozolevs’kyi and S. V. Polin, Kurgany skifskogo Gerrosa IV v. do n.é. (Babina, Vodyana i
Soboleva Mogily) (Tumuli of the Scythian Gerrhos of the Fourth Century BC (Babina,
Vodyana, and Soboleva Mogila) ) (Kiev, 2005); and L. Galanina, Die Kurgane von Kelermes:
Königsgräber der frühskythischen Zeit, Steppenvölker Eurasiens (Moscow, 1997).
More specialist aspects of the burial rituals are dealt with in a variety of sources.
For embalming see I. S. Kamenetskiy, ‘O bal’zamirovanii umershikh tsarey u skifov’
(About Embalming of the Dead Kings among the Scythians), Istoriko-arkheologicheskiy
al’manakh (Historico-Archaeological Almanac), 1 (1995), 68–76. The totenreiter (death
riders) found at Chertomlÿk are discussed in Rolle, Murzin, and Alekseev, Königskurgan
Čertomlyk (cited above), 51. Herodotus’ description of cannibalism among the
Massagetae and Issedones has been taken to task in E. M. Murphy and J. P. Mallory,
‘Herodotus and the Cannibals’, Antiquity, 74 (2000), 388–94, who offer the hypothesis
that Herodotus confused as cannibalism the de-fleshing of bodies for hygienic
reasons, practised by pastoralists when a person died during the summer transÂ
humance and they wished to bury the body later after they had returned to their
winter camp.
Chapter 12 Scythians and the Longue Durée
The background to the development of pastoral nomadism in Eurasia up to the end
of the Late Bronze Age is presented in D. W. Anthony, The Horse, The Wheel, and Language:
How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (Prince-
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