THE IMAGES OF WOMEN IN THE ART OF NORTHERN PONTIC REGION AS THE SOURCE FOR RECONSTRUCTION OF FEMALE SCYTHIAN COSTUMES

Abstract

The costume is the category of culture which contains the information about material and spiritual spheres of life within the socium. The important sources for the costumes reconstruction are the archaeological artifacts. They combine findings — toreutics artifacts with antropomorhpys images as well as remains of headwearings, clothing, shoes, decorative elements of clothing. Antropomorphy was not inherent for the art of Scythian tribes. However in V century BC the images of «masks» without specific details occur. Later, in IV century BC we find toreutics products which focus on the «portraits». Among them we find classical ancient Greek images, and stylized, made in Greek-Scythian tradition. Such characteristics can be found in artifacts with plot compositions. They are distinguished by Greek iconography, as well as ethnographic characteristics of the characters. Generally they can be presented as an image of the goddess on the throne from different perspectives.
 The studying of the images showed that Scythian females had headwearings, generally inherent for many tribes. They are bedspreads, tapes, caps: cylindrical (poloses, modieses, kalafs) and cone-shaped. The ethnolocal specifics to such headwearings is given by decorative elements. Some of them have the specifics of Greek diadem — stephan. It is highlighted by archaeological findings — golden aprons for trimming poloses with arched frontal ledge.
 The analysis of female Scythian outer look allows to imagine the shape of shoulder and waist clothing: robes with sleeves longer than arm, wide dresses, draped skirt. Due to high-detailed images we can determine the way of shaping: observing details of the images showed two options for tunic-shaped cutting.
 Despite the schematics and the generalization in female imagery, studying toreutics works with female Scythian images presented is an important foundation point for reconstructing not only the general look, but also the ways of creating costumes, their aesthetic, ethnolocal and semantic specifics.