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A Revew
The scope of the Nomads volume is astonishing - the Eurasian
steppes from Eastern Europe through Central Asia and to Mongolia, with a millennial
time frame that encompasses components of the Late Bronze and the whole of the
Early Iron Ages. The anthology's 10 authors, all of whom are recognized specialists
on steppe nomad prehistory, synthesize Soviet research undertaken between 1960
and 1990. This indispensable, comprehensive synthesis, the initial publication
of the Center for the Study of Eurasian Nomads, contains rich, current data
and will be a primary resource for many decades to come. A majority of the research
on Eurasian steppe archaeology is published overwhelmingly in Russian. Hence,
there is a paucity of contemporary information published in other Western languages;
but this treatise on the "Scytho Siberian world," designed by its
editors as a "research tool" (p. vii), contributes significantly to
filling this void. The volume focuses upon the Scythian,
Sauromatian, Sarmatian, Saka, and early Mongolian nomads who inhabited the Eurasian
steppes during the first millennium B.C. A majority of the site and artifact
descriptions and interpretations have never been published in English, making
this work essential for any scholar working on Soviet and Central Asian Late
Bronze and Early Iron Ages. The anthology will also be valuable to scholars
of the Asian subcontinent, Southwest Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Sinitic Far
East for its detail and the regional linkages it establishes.This compendium
has an elucidating foreword and editorial introduction, followed by five chronological
or regional groupings containing 20 chapters (varying from four to 41 pages).
It concludes with two bibliographies, a useful 21-page three-column index of
contemporary authors. The detailed text is supplemented by line drawings of
site plans, artifacts, and assemblages. Some of the figures lack scale measurements
so that key illustrations of interments and ceramic vessels are compromised.
One bibliography has 408 Russian entries with full English translations; the
second contains 26 non-Russian references. The editors claim 900 bibliographic
citations (p. vii). Relevant references to Herodotus, Strabo, and Tacitus are
incorporated. The chapters, in the main, define a region, chronology, and geographic-ecological
characteristics. Despite local variations in burial rituals and contact with
classical civilizations, kurgans (semispherical earthen burial mounds) and the
Scytho-Sarmatian triad (specialized weaponry, horse harness, and "animal
style" depictions) are ubiquitous steppe culture characteristics.Part I
has three regional chapters on the Scythians (late eighth to third century B.C.):
North Caucasus, Southeastern Europe, and Crimea. The authors elaborate burial
types, grave goods, ethnogeography, metallurgy, kurgan construction, anthropomorphic
lithic stelae. Greek and local ceramics, fortified settlements, and subsistence
economy. These essays replace Melyukova's "The Scythians and Sarmatians"
in D. Sinor ed., The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (Cambridge 1990),
and update R. Rolle's Die Welt der Skythen (Munich 1980), translated as The
World of the Scythians (Berkeley 1989).Part II contains nine chapters detailing
Sauromatian and Sarmatian tribes (sixth century B.C. To fourth century A.D.):
a historical overview; analysis of past research; essays on the Transitional
Period and on Sauromatian culture; treatises on early, middle, and late Sarmatian
culture; and a review of Sarmatian presence in the North Caucasus. The authors
suggest that climatic changes resulting in a deteriorating steppe ecology necessitated
a nomadic lifeway. Moshkova (pp. 186-88) speculates about tribal unions, class
formation, and primitive state development.Part III includes three chapters
on the Central Asian Saka: written sources and history, material culture, and
ethnogenetic hypotheses. Yablonsky concludes that Saka peoples (Iranian speaking
nomadic cattle-breeders) were actively involved in the political and military
expansion of the Achaemenid empire, the fall of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom,
and the formations of Parthia and later the Kushan empire (pp. 193-95). Regional
delineations of kurgan cemeteries, grave goods, and pottery are made for nine
geographic regions.Part IV has four contributions on the Siberian Scythians:
a history of past research and problems, the Tuva and Altai Mountain regions,
and Tagai culture. Petroglyphs, lithic stelae, and Pazyryk and Arzhan kurgans
are reported. Five social groups are inferred based upon burial wealth. This
presentation supersedes V.N. Chernetsov and W. Moszyonska's Prehistory of Western
Siberia (Montreal 1974).Part V consists of one chapter on early nomads in Mongolia
and information on the Late Neolithic, Afanasievo, Slab Grave, and Karasuk cultures.
Volkov concludes candidly that "during the period of the great migrations,
the nomadic movement literally recarved the ethnic and political map of Asia
and areas further to the West" (p. 332).This compendium complements F.T.
Hiebert's Origins of Bronze Age Civilization in Central Asia (Cambridge, Mass.
1994) (reported by this reviewer in AJA 100 [1996] 182-183). It enhances three
outdated volumes in the Ancient Peoples and Places series: T.T. Rice's The Scythians
(New York 1961, T. Sulimirski's The Sarmatians (New York 1970), and V.M. Masson
and V.I. Sarianidi's Central Asia: Turkmenia before the Achaemenids (New York
1972). Likewise, it supplements UNESCO's History of Civilizations of Central
Asia I. The Dawn of Civilization: Earliest Times to 700 B.C. Edited by A.H.
Dani and V.M. Masson (Paris 1992), and History of Civilizations of Central Asia
II. The Development of Sedentary and Nomadic Civilizations: 700 B.C. To A.D.
250, edited by Harmatta, B.N. Puri, and G.F. Etemandi (Paris 1994).Charles Kolb
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(excerpted from American Journal of
Archaeology, April 1997)
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