Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

further reading
ton, 2007), while for a broader perspective, taking the story up to the Mongols, see
B. Cunliffe, By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia (Oxford, 2015). The power
struggle in the Far East leading to the westerly migration of the Yuezhi and Wusun
is thoroughly treated in X. Lin, ‘Migration and Settlement of the Yuezhi-Kushan:
Interaction and Interdependence of Nomadic and Sedentary Societies’, Journal of
World History, 12 (2001), 261–92 and C. G. R. Benjamin, The Yuezhi: Origin, Migration and
the Conquest of Northern Bactria (Turnhout, 2007). For the cemetery of Tillya Tepe see
V. I. Sarianidi, ‘Ancient Bactria’s Golden Hoard’, in F. Hiebert and P. Cambon (eds.),
Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World (London, 2011), 145–209.
The most accessible source on the Sarmatians in English is T. Sulimirski, The Sarmatians
(London, 1970), which ranges wide, taking the story of the various nomadic
groups from the sixth and fifth centuries to the time of the Alans and Huns. J. Harmatta,
Studies in the History and Language of the Sarmatians (Szeged, 1970) offers a more
focused account. For a more recent treatment, see L. Lebedynsky, Les Sarmates: Amazones
et lanciers cuirasses entre Ourai et Danube, VIIe siècle avant J.-C.–VIe siècle après J.-C.
(Paris, 2002). Something of the complexity of the archaeological data is shown by
the various contributions (chapters 8–12), in J. Davis-Kimball, V. A. Bashilov, and
L. T. Yablonsky (eds.), Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age (Berkeley,
1995), 121–88. A critical view of the way in which the archaeological evidence has
been interpreted is put forward in V. Mordviutseva, ‘The Sarmatians: The Creation
of Archaeological Evidence’, in Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 32 (2013), 203–19. The
engagement of the various Sarmatian tribes—the Iazyges and the Roxolani—with
the Roman world is put into its historical context in A. Mócsy, Pannonia and Upper
Moesia: A History of the Middle Danube Provinces of the Roman Empire (London, 1974).
For the Alans in their steppe homeland see V. Kouznetsov and I. Lebedynsky, Les
Alains: Cavaliers des steppes, seigneurs du Caucase (Paris, 1997) and S. G. Botalov, ‘The
Asian Migrations of the Alans in the 1st Century AD’, Ancient West and East, 6 (2007),
135–60. The westerly migrations of Alans is presented in B. S. Bachrach, A History of
the Alans in the West: From their First Appearance in the Sources of Classical Antiquity through
the Early Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 1973). Among the many scholarly accounts of the
Huns the most readable is E. A. Thompson, The Huns (rev. edn., Oxford, 1996). The
survival of the culture and language of the Alans in the Caucasus contributing to
that of the modern Ossetians is briefly summarized in Sulimirski, The Sarmatians
(cited above), 197–202.
383