Vitalie Bârca, Notes on the origin and dating of the bone pyxides from the Sarmatian environment between the Don and the Prut

Abstract

The object of this article is to discuss the bone pyxides discovered in the Sar¬matian graves from the north and north-west of the Black Sea. The study, with¬out being exhaustive, attempts a presentation of the graves where bone pyxides were identified, but also of the cultural environments where similar toiletry piec¬es were used. The conclusion is that bone pyxides in Sarmatian graves from the north and north-west Pontic territory are mainly Roman products. Nonetheless, it is not excluded that some pyxides are copies of the first, made in local work¬shops (north-Pontic). The author notes that all Sarmatian graves containing bone pyxides date, on the basis of grave goods, to the second half of the 1st – early/first decades of the 2nd c. AD. Furthermore, it is noted they are usually part of the grave group belonging to the new wave of Sarmatians arriving to the north-Pontic area starting with mid 1st c. AD from east of the Don and that in the second half of the 1st – first decades of the 2nd c. AD they form a well marked local cultur¬al-chronological horizon. Last but not least, the author notes that pyxides are part of funerary features dating to the period of major inflow of Roman artifacts to the Sarmatian environment set between AD 60/70 – 120/130.