On One of Varieties of Scythian Period Buckles

Abstract

Metal buckles with movable clappers are not frequent findings in Scythian antiquities. In all, 37 items are found in European Scythia; they are dated by the end of the 5th and the 4th centuries BC. All buckles are round and with fixing point-clappers. They are made mostly of iron, and more rarely of bronze, copper, gold, or silver. There are 3 types of them. Type 1 includes buckles with zoomorphic endings, including an item made of precious metals from barrow 11 (excavations by the VUAK) of group of Chasti Barrows, with endings decorated with boar heads, and also an item from a burial under mound 29/21 near Mastiugino in the Don River middle region. Both of them are found in the burials of the local Forest- Steppe nobles. Type 2 covers buckles with loops on the endings and is the most numerous. Only 3 items of 20 are made of bronze, the rest of them are made of iron. They are most numerous in the Don River middle region, though they also known in Steppe Scythia and Forest-Steppe zone of Ukrainian Left Bank region. Type 3 are buckles in form of smooth rings. Half of 10 items comes from the Steppe zone, though they are also found in the Don River middle flow region, the Siverskyi Donets River region, and the Dnipro, namely on the south of its right bank forest-steppe region. Coming from their size, this type is divided into 2 groups including massive and miniature products. Artifacts are found both in men’s, and in women’s burials of various social estates. Most often, they are found in the burials of Forest-Steppe nobles. Buckles were used to fasten the claps of outerwear, belts, and girdles, on headdress, horse’s equipment, and perhaps as fasteners for quivers. Pinned buckles having arisen on south of Eastern Europe in the Scythian period, never got out of use until the present.