Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia最新文献

Surveys carried out in the Javakheti Plateau during the last decade have improved our knowledge of the Bronze Age archaeology of this highland zone of the Lesser Caucasus of Georgia. Surveys have been conducted all over the area surrounding the Mt. Chikiani volcano, along the southern terraces of the Tsalka Reservoir, and some of the north-western slopes of Mt. Paravani. All these territories have yielded impressive evidence of megalithic monuments, stone-walled villages, kurgans, basalt and schist quarries, as well as obsidian extraction and production areas. Among these latter is an important circular platform made of basalt boulders, above which a workshop for the manufacture of obsidian bifacial arrowheads and spearheads was discovered. All the aforementioned features have been GPS-recorded and photographed with the use of a non-professional small drone. They show that the entire region is a monumental landscape, which most probably started to be built around the beginning of the Bronze Age, as many of the lithic finds would suggest.

The paper studies a copper coin type issued during the reign of the Kuṣāṇ king Kujūla Kadphises (ca. 40/50–90 AD) called “Roman Emperor Type”. These coins, dated towards the end of the first century AD, present on the obverse the image of a ruler recalling the imperial iconography of the Julio-Claudian period, and on the reverse Kujūla himself seated. The coin is a real innovation in the history of ancient Indian numismatics and can be the starting point to understand the political choices of Kujūla in a context still embryonic for the Kuṣāṇs. This paper, through the literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources at our disposal, aims to demonstrate that the issuing was influenced not only by the halo of authority that the Romans had in India, but mainly by the economic and religious context of the city, which the sovereign used as a place of experimentation for this particular hybrid type of coin.

In the last 15 years, the excavations at the island of St. Kirik offshore from Sozopol (ancient Apollonia Pontica) on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast have yielded thousands of fragments of Archaic Greek pottery, including a sizeable collection of drinking cups from the last decades of the 7th and the early 6th centuries BC – North Ionian hemispherical cups (“bird bowls”, “meander bowls”, etc.) and early types of South Ionian cups with everted rims (“Ionian cups”). The comparison with the assemblages from Istros, Berezan, Orgame, and Taganrog, all of them presumably earlier than Apollonia – with a traditional foundation date c.610 BC, reveals practically an identical repertoire. A couple of “anomalous” fragments that are even earlier, from the middle or third quarter of the 7th century BC, have parallels only at Berezan. The paper argues that there are grounds to suggest an earlier chronology of Apollonia’s foundation, closer to that of the other early Ionian apoikiai.

The paper discusses a hoard of Late Bosporan staters found in the sixth-century fire layer in Phanagoria. A purse with 82 coins was hidden in the neck of a Pontic Opaiţ B–1b amphora. The hoard contains staters of Thothorses, Rhadamsades, and Rhescuporis VI, as well as a Panticapaean tetrachalkos of Asander’s time. The conflagration layer is associated with the report of Procopius of Caesarea (Procop. Caes. De bell. VIII.5.28) on the destruction of Phanagoria and Kepoi. The date of the disaster in Phanagoria and the concealment of the hoard is determined by two main circumstances. The first one is the discovery of Justinian I’s solidus of the 545–565 Group together with Late Bosporan staters in a nearby building which met its end in the same fire. The second circumstance is the date of Procopius’ completing Book VIII of his ‘History of the Wars’, i.e. 554 AD. Therefore, Phanagoria and Kepoi were destroyed neither before 545, nor after 554 AD. Accordingly, the hoard’s concealment dates between 545 and 554 AD.

Near the northwestern-southeastern foothills of the Marvdasht plain in Fars province, lie a range of ancient necropoleis which date from the reign of Darius I, the Achaemenid king and until the first century after the Muslim conquest. The well-known necropoleis of Naqsh-e Rostam and Persepolis have the most complex tombs among them. However, there are other burials in this region, although smaller and simpler or even imitative, which have considerable archeological importance, since they provide information for the social and political understanding of their time of creation, often known as the dark ages. The present study aims to introduce and analyze the structural-chronological features of the rock-cut tomb of Khūrigān, one of the recent discoveries near Naqsh-e Rostam. Regarding the architectural and stylistic characteristics of the tomb and its context, as well as considering its archeological landscape and using historical information, the period from the last century of the Achaemenid reign until the beginning of the Sassanid dynasty is considered for the general chronology of this tomb; however, through applying a more detailed perspective, we can attribute the chronology of this tomb to the first half of the 3rd until the 1st century BC.

The article presents assemblage of Seleucid and Greco-Bactrian coins found by the Czech-Uzbek archaeological expedition in the frame of a sampling metal detector survey in the upper reaches of Sherabad Darya, from the sites of the Darband Wall, Daganajam, Kurganzol and Iskandar Tepa in 2018. Sixteen specimens, of both silver and copper alloys, which were determined including a very rare Seleukos I (?) coin are assessed not only from the numismatic and historical point of view, but also analysed in terms of elemental composition.

The article presents a preliminary publication of the collection of Eastern Greek pottery found during the excavations at the ancient settlement Balan, the Ochamchira region of Abkhazia in 2017–2022. The published material is a part of the finds from a complex of ashy soil and a platform with a fireplace discovered at the site. The collection consists of fragments of vessels for storing and drinking wine, produced in the period from ca. 620 to ca. 550 BC. At present, this is the earliest known archaic pottery assemblage discovered in the Eastern Black Sea region.

Attic black-glazed ware is undoubtedly a common material in the Northern Black Sea region. The majority of such finds can provide information for a profound understanding of ancient materials. Together with pottery decoration, the morphology of forms not only allows to determine the most correct dating for the particular ware, but also to identify dates for closed archaeological complexes and larger objects. For instance, specific types of pottery decoration, such as particular motifs or styles, can contribute to the dating process. This article presents the analysis of a specific group of glossed pottery – plates – covering roughly the time from the late Archaic to the Hellenistic period. Multiform plates and bowls were one of the most popular types of the black-glazed pottery.

The article presents a recent find of a potsherd, bearing an ancient Greek graffito, reported from the area of the Bilsk Hillfort. The area of discovery, considered by some archaeologists to be the city of Gelonos (Hdt. 4.108), makes this otherwise ordinary graffito potentially significant. The authors discuss the historical, archaeological, and epigraphic contexts of the find and possible scenarios of how it may have ended up at the site. To provide an epigraphic background for the find, the study is accompanied by a catalogue of Greek graffiti and dipinti from Scythian burials and settlements of the Northern Black Sea area and steppe and forest-steppe zones of Eastern Europe.

This paper aims at elaborating the potential existence of craft production site(s) for manufacturing the colouring materials in the Persepolis area. In doing so, the paper discusses the colour pigments and elements used for decorating the Achaemenid royal-official buildings, the ancient contexts in which raw materials for colouring have been discovered and the parts of the Persepolis area in which the indication of possible craft production sites have been reported. Particular attention is paid to recently published archaeometric analyses which dealt with the scientific characterization of certain pigments unearthed in Persepolis West. By gathering all the aforementioned information, the author confirms the production of raw materials for colouring in the Persepolis West craft zone. Furthermore, the paper includes a detailed discussion on the exact functions of this craft production site and shows that Persia, together with Egypt, Greece, southern Italy, and eastern Anatolia, was one of the few places in which the production of Egyptian blue is evidenced.