The Huns in the Plains of Crimea

Abstract

The article reviews some evidence of written sources about the Huns in the Crimea and the Huns’ burials found in the plains of the Crimea. Many researchers of the Crimean history dated the invasion of the Huns in the Northern Black Sea region to the time of the reign of Emperor Valens (364–378) taking into account the information of only some narrative sources. However, there is no information about the Huns’ crossing through the Cimmerian Bosporus Strait and the attack on the Bosporus cities in the 370s in the written sources. According to Syrian and Greek sources, N.V. Pigulevskaya reasonably attributed Huns’ crossing through Meotida and the Caucasus Mountains to Mesopotamia and the Syrian coast to 395. This date is confirmed by the updated chronology of nomadic burials known in the Crimea and ceramics from Bosporan cities and settlements. Apparently, the Huns appeared on the peninsula after their settlement in the Northern Black Sea region at the end of the 4th – 5th centuries. Huns tombs on the hillside of Koklyuk, from the State Farm named after Kalinin, from Belyaus and on the necropolis of Ust-Alma are dated back to the first half of the 5th century by polychrome things. According to the funeral rite, the described Crimean graves of the first half of the 5th century are similar to the graves excavated under the kurgans with horse skin known in steppes of the Northern Black Sea region. I.P. Zasetskaya reasonably associated them with the Turks, who were part of the Hunnic tribal union. Nomad burials in Izobilnoe were attributed to the second half of the 5th century, in Marfovka – to the end of the 5th century, and in Chykarenko – to the first half of the 6th century. The graves of nomads of the first half of the 5th century belonged to the Akatziri, and the graves of the second half of the 5th century – first half of the 6th century belonged to Huns-Altziagiri.