The Golden Deer of Eurasia: Scythian and Sarmatian Treasures from the Russian Steppes

Aruz, Joan, ed., with Ann Farkas, Andrei Alekseev, and Elena Korolkova (2000)

This title is out of print.

Publication Details

Description

Spectacular works of art were excavated between 1986 and 1990 from burial mounds at Filippovka, in Russia, on the border of Europe and Asia. The objects were created from about the fifth to the fourth century B.C. by pastoral people who lived on the steppes near the southern Ural Mountains. The large funerary deposits include wooden, deerlike creatures with predatory mouths and elongated snouts and ears, overlaid with sheets of gold and silver, as well as gold attachments for wooden vessels and gold and silver luxury wares imported from Achaemenid Iran. These treasures are now in the collection of the Archaeological Museum, Ufa, in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan.

The discoveries at Filippovka open a new chapter in the history of the material culture of the nomads who in the first millennium B.C. traversed the steppe corridor extending from the Black Sea region to China. Yet the information provided by the Filippovka excavations is complicated and ambiguous. The identity of the people represented by the finds remains uncertain, but the forms and ornamentation of many works from Filippovka, as well as the cemetery's location in the southern Urals, argue for the cultural-chronological designation of this material as Early Sarmatian. Stylistic features, however, point also to the arts of Siberia, Central Asia, and China in the east and to the art of the "Meotian-Scythians" in the west. Imported Achaemenid goods raise questions about their place of production and about the circumstances that brought them to be included in tombs on the southern Ural steppes. Finally, robbers penetrated the burials in antiquity, destroying much of the evidence necessary for understanding the Filippovka nomads' religious and funerary practices.

These are among the issues addressed in this volume, the catalogue for an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art that brings together the remarkable new material from Filippovka and, from the incomparably rich collections of the State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, related luxury objects found in graves of other Eurasian steppe tribes. Gold and silver objects from the Scythian Black Sea tombs; textiles and leather and wooden works from the Altai Mountains; and gold and bronze pieces from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Siberia illustrate developments in the art of the steppes in the centuries preceding the Filippovka burials, in contemporary societies, and in later centuries, toward the turn of the first millennium B.C. These outstanding works not only place the Filippovka discoveries in their proper historical and cultural context but are themselves fascinating and enigmatic.

Table of contents

Director's Foreword
Contributors to the Catalogue
Chronology
Map: The World of the Eurasian Nomads
Acknowledgments
Note to the Reader

I. The Filippovka Kurgans

Filippovka and the Art of the Steppes
Ann Farkas

The Iranians and the Sarmatians: A Note on Terminology
Gernot Windfuhr

The Filippovka Kurgans at the Heart of the Eurasian Steppes
Anatolii Pshenichniuk

Conservation and Technical Analyses of the Finds from the Filippovka Kurgans
Aleksei Bantikov

Paleoanthropological Characteristics of the Early Nomads of the Southern Urals: The Evidence from the Filippovka Kurgans
R. M. Iusupov

II. The Nomads of Eurasia: History and Archaeology

The Scythians: Asian and European
Andrei Alekseev

The Nomads of Kazakhstan, the Altai, and Tuva
Leonid Marsadolov

The Sarmatians: Masters of the Steppes after the Scythians
Elena Korolkova

III. Cults and Rituals

Scythian Gods and Customs
Liudmila Galanina

Images of the Mounted Steppe Warrior
Elena Korolkova

Ritual Vessels of the Nomads
Elena Korolkova

Bone Spoons and Wooden Vessels of the Nomads and the Cult of Soma/Hauma
Vitalii Fedorov

Catalogue

I. The Filippovka Kurgans and the Art of the Sarmatians

The Filippovka Kurgans and the Animal Style
Elena Korolkova
Catalogue numbers 1–136

II. The Caucasus and the Pontic Steppes

Scythian Art from the Pontic Steppes
Liudmila Galanina
Catalogue numbers 137–68

III. The Kurgans of the Altai and Central Asia

The Nomadic Culture of the Altai and the Animal Style
Liudmila Barkova
Catalogue numbers 169–98

IV. Nomadic Antiquities from Siberia

Bronzes from the Minusinsk Basin and Goldwork from the Siberian Collection of Peter the Great
Maria Zavitukhina
Catalogue numbers 199–212

Bibliography of Works Cited
Index
Photograph Credits

About the authors

Joan Aruz is Acting Associate Curator in Charge in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Ann Farkas is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

Andrei Alekseev is Head and Senior Researcher and Curator in the Department of Archaeology at the State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg.

Elena Korolkova is Senior Researcher and Curator in the Department of Archaeology at the State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg.

Press reviews

Magazine Antiques

"The four authors have succeeded in producing a book that places the Filippovka discoveries in their proper historical and cultural context, and also shows them ... to be fascinating and enigmatic."

Choice Reviews Online

"The wealth of information both textual and visual will prove of great value to scholars in this field."

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