Этническая ситуация в Северном Причерноморье и Приазовье по данным Певтингеровой карты

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to determine the ethnic situation in the steppe zone of the Northern Black Sea and the Azov Sea according to the Tabula Peutingeriana and to date this information. The article avoids the cities of the Bosporus and the North Caucasus. Changes of the ethnic and political situation in the steppe zone of Europe under the influence of migrations of nomads and other peoples (for example, Goths) permit to date the information on the Tabula Peutingeriana. The attention is mostly paid to the locations of such peoples as Roxolani, Sarmatians of Central Europe, Maeotians, Caucasian Alans. At the same time such ethnonyms like Siraces, Aspurgiani, Psaccani, being in accordance with anticient tradition, prevent narrowing the chronological framework of the Tabula’s data. The Maeotians of the Lower Don existed from the boundary of the two eras till the middle of the 3rd century. The Roxolani dwelled between the Carpathian Mountains and the Dnieper from the middle of the 1st century to about the middle of the 3rd century. Caucasian Alans could not appear on the Tabula earlier than the 2nd century. Archeological realities permit to supplement and arrange the ethnic situation. Also, the author draws attention to the peoples which are not present on the Tabula Peutingeriana, such as Goths, Alans and Aorsi in the Northern Black Sea, and Huns. All these data permit to suggest that the Tabula shows the location of the peoples of the Northern Black Sea and the Azov Sea between mid-2nd and mid-3rd centuries or maybe rather between the boundary of the 2nd/3rd centuries and the first half of the 3rd century. One can clearly see that the central idea of the Tabula Peutingeriana is its being a comprehensive itinerary, a bunch of the roads connecting the Roman Empire and the Orient. Therefore, everything behind the road net, the Tabula’s edge, its periphery, is not very important. Its source was not a literary tradition (like in the case of Ammianus Marcellinus’ work), but rather more contemporaneous data. Apparently, the author of the version of the 3rd century desired to fill the space of the oikumene with relevant information, but did not delve into the information on the regions distant from the road net.