Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

predatory nomads
roofed with multiple layers of logs. The enclosures within which the grave pits were
set tended to become larger over time and concomitantly the number of burials
placed in each pit increased. The barrows covering the burials also increased in size,
occasionally reaching up to 20 metres in height. By the sixth century bc social stratification
had led to the considerable elaboration of some of the burials. The Bolshoi
Salbykskii mound, in the Salbyk valley, was 11 metres high, while the enclosure wall
contained huge vertical stone slabs standing 6 metres in height, each weighing up to
50 tons. The construction of such a mound implies that the lineage of the deceased
wielded considerable coercive power.
The grave goods buried with the dead in the Tagar period attest an assured and
skilled bronze casting tradition rooted in the Late Bronze Age. Prominent among
the offerings were weapons: bows and arrows (represented now by bronze arrow-
4.3 A selection of offensive weapons of the Tagar period from the Minusinsk Valley—bilobate and trilobate
arrowheads, daggers, and battleaxes—all types which became widespread among the Scythians.
Fig 4.3
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