BRONZE CROSS-SHAPED PLAQUES AS A CHRONOLOGY INDICATOR OF SKYTHIAN KURGANS OF THE NORTH PONTIC REGION OF THE SECOND — THIRD QUARTER OF THE 4th CENTURY BC

Abstract

In the Scythian kurgans of the IVth century BC in the Northern Black Sea region, 31 bronze cruciform plaques were found. Such plaques are found mainly in male graves and much less often in female ones. These plaques were used as quiver buckles and for attaching the quiver to the belt. The main zone of concentration of cross-shaped plaques finds covers is the territory of the Lower Dnieper region, directly to the Dnieper. Apparently, this indicates that they were made in this region, where their place of manufacture could be only Kamenskoe hillfort, which was the center of metallurgy and metalworking in Steppe Scythia. From here they diverged south-east to Sivash within the present-day Kherson region, and much further north to the forest-steppe within the present-day right-bank Cherkasy and left-bank Kiev regions. Cross-shaped plaques are indicators of the advance of the steppe Scythians from the Lower Dnieper region to the north in the Ukrainian forest-steppe, to the west as far as the Lower Danube and very close to the south-east to Sivash. The latter direction, apparently, corresponds to migrations to winter pastures. More than half of all finds of cross-shaped plaques reliably date from within the second to third quarters of the IVth century BC, which gives every reason to assume the same dating for the complexes, where there are no own dating materials. In general, such bronze cross-shaped plaques are a reliable chronological indicator Scythian burials of the Northern Black Sea region of the second — third quarter of the IVth century BC, and also partly ethnic.