Sarmatian Research Articles

A Helmet from Filippovka-1 Burial-Ground

Abstract This article is devoted to the find of a unique forged iron helmet from the Filippovka-1 Burial-ground of the Early Sarmatian culture, in the steppe near the southern foothills of the Urals. The helmet was found in a fragmentary state and was later restored. Analysis of the shape, manufacturing technology and specific features of its construction was carried out. Like the other finds from the burial, the helmet was dated to the 4th century bc. It is most probable that it was made by a craftsman who belonged to a nomadic population and was ordered so as to resemble bronze specimens.

FIRST RECORD OF FOSSIL CYSTOPHORINAE (CARNIVORA, PHOCIDAE): MIDDLE MIOCENE SEALS FROM THE NORTHERN PARATETHYS

Despite a long history of phocid studies, no fossil members of the Subfamily Cystophorinae have ever been described. New fossil material from the Middle Sarmatian (11.2-12.3 Ma) in the Paratethyan Basin of Ukraine allows emended diagnoses and redescriptions to help clarify phylogenetic relationships within the Family Phocidae. After cladistic and morphological analyses of the material, a new genus ( Pachyphoca ) was erected, with two new species of extinct fossil true seals ( Pachyphoca ukrainica and Pachyphoca chapskii ), belonging to the Subfamily Cystophorinae. This new material shows exceptional pachyosteosclerotic bones, which is uncommon for the family as a whole. The new Miocene genus shares numerous characters with several Recent species of Cystophora and Mirounga , providing the first opportunity to study sexual dimorphism of limb bones and mandibles in the Subfamily Cystophorinae. Sexual dimorphism in postcranial bones and mandibles in living members of Cystophorinae is more obvious than in other representatives of true seals. Examination of anatomical traits demonstrated that both new species are more primitive and better adapted for terrestrial locomotion than any living representatives of Cystophorinae. The smaller Pachyphoca ukrainica is more adapted to terrestrial locomotion than its larger relative, P . chapskii . Phylogenetic analysis suggests that seals with 10 incisors (Phocinae) are more primitive than those with 8 (Monachinae), and that Monachinae are more primitive than seals with 6 incisors (Cystophorinae).These findings indicate that the Subfamily Cystophorinae includes not only elephant and hooded seals, but also the two new Middle Sarmatian pachyosteosclerotic seals.

Раннесарматский рыцарь

Раннесарматский рыцарь

Physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics of steppe paleosols of the ural region

Investigation of paleosols with different ages of burial mounds and the unique fortified city of Arkhaim in the steppe zone of the Southern Trans-Urals (Chelyabinsk region) is carried out. They are located on the remnants of the Big Karaganka River valley. The time of construction of archaeological monuments dates back to the Early Iron Age (Sarmatian Culture, 2300–2200 years ago) and Middle Bronze Age (Sintashta culture, 3800–4100 years ago). The soils are of medium and light loamy granulometric composition. Morphological, chemical, and mineralogical investigations of paleosols and background soils indicate that, in the Sarmatian time, the climatic conditions in the region were drier than currently, while during the Sintashta cultural development, the climate of the region was similar to the present one.

Стратиграфическое значение брюхоногих моллюсков и совершенствование местной стратиграфической схемы сарматских отложений Молдавского Приднестровья и сопредельных территорий

Приднестровский государственный университет, Тирасполь, Республика МолдоваE-mail: I. D. Kanevskaya@yandex.ru.В статье аргументировано использование гастропод при стратиграфических подразделени-ях сарматских отложений. Обоснованно выделены типичные стратиграфические комплексы брюхоногих моллюсков для отдельных горизонтов сармата Молдавского Приднестровья и сопредельных территорий. Схема стратиграфии сармата в пределах данной территории со-держит дополнительные, предложенные авторами, стратиграфические подразделения в ран-ге «слоев с фауной гастропод».

Daugiakalbystė LDK: realijos, politika, žaidimai

The present article analyses the formation of multilingual society in medieval Lithuania. It aims specifically at investigating the origin of multilingualism in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its implications on the development of Lithuanian society, political and cultural peculiarity, linguistic diversity as well as the construction of ethnic identity. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a nationally and linguistically diverse, multireligious state, had to turn to multilingualism for internal and external communication. Firstly, multilingualism was encouraged by the aspiration to integrate the state of Lithuania into the Europe of those days in the cultural, economic and political sense (even in the pre-Christian period). The Grand Duke Gediminas in his letter, dated on 26 May 1323, addressed to the Franciscan monks, requested sending four brothers who knew Polish, Semigalii and Russian to Lithuania. Multilingualism flourished exceptionally in the internal communication of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: at least six languages were used for the purposes of script and literature alone. The same number of languages was used in everyday communication among different ethnic groups. In the 16th century, the strengthening of linguistic policy manifestations enabled the formation of at least four cultural information dissemination codes that survived until the 19th century. All of them were based on signification of a different language as the aspect of cultural development. As the study revealed, the origin of Lithuanian multilingualism can be associated with both the geopolitical situation of the ancient Lithuania and internal political framework of a multinational state. Cultural, religious and political processes determined a specific situation of communication in the country which manifested itself by almost parallel use of several languages in societal life. Languages exerted impact upon the formation of four different cultural information dissemination codes, discerning the models of Lithuanian, Latin (Roman), Byelorussian and Polish or Sarmatian culture. Politicization of language performed in 1697, when on the basis of the law of Coequation (Coaequatio iurium) the Polish language was entrenched in state offices, indicated essential changes in the state language policy: the Polish language became one among the equal languages of the GDL . Still the multinationality and diversity of confessions were maintained in cultural communication, literature, religion and science. Multilingualism disappeared from the state offices to emerge in public paratheatre events and was firmly anchored in creativity for special occasions and sophisticated poetry where it was mainly expressed by multilingual greetings of sovereigns and the noble. Welcoming speeches (Gratulationes) form a specific genre of literature, directly related to traditions and habits of public life of the nobility. Welcoming speeches at large belong to the area of occasional creativity and illustrate linguistic literacy of the society and tendencies of imperial or political impact of those times. Apart from Lithuanian, such languages as Latin, Rusini (lot. Rutheni or old Byelorussian), Church Slavonic, Polish, Latvian, German, Italian, French were used; also other, rather exotic languages (in the case of GDL ) such as Syrian, Hungarian, Finnish, Belgian, English, Scottish, Irish, Spanish, Czech can be found. Playings by languages and sometimes by alphabets were popular in a private setting as well. A number of such manifestations can be found in marginal printings (letters, notes of friendship, book proveniences and etc.). Although in the sunset of the Grand Duchy the societal multilingualism became narrower, it still existed owing to ethnic diversity and new emerging political tendencies in the country. Texts in several languages became a new form of communication. A colourful linguistic diversity of the Grand Duchy was evidenced by rich literary heritage, for instance, the macaronic (Latin macaronicum) style of poetry where poems written in Latin were intertwined with the words of national languages to reach a satirical or amusing effect. The conclusion is drawn in the study that Lithuanian multilingualism, closely related with societal multiculturalism and development of ethnic identity as well as religious tolerance of the ancient state, outlived the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: a new political situation in the 19th century failed to impose monolingualism both to private and partly to public life. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-2027.1.4

Проблемы изучения периодизации раннесарматских памятников Нижнего Поволжья

Проблемы изучения периодизации раннесарматских памятников Нижнего Поволжья

Хозяйственно-культурный уклад и образ жизни сарматских племен по данным античных письменных источников

Хозяйственно-культурный уклад и образ жизни сарматских племен по данным античных письменных источников

The testament of Andrzej Wolski, subjudge of Chełm, from 1739. A page from the history of careers of nobility and Sarmatian foundations

Testament Andrzeja Wolskiego, podsędka ziemskiego chełmskiego, z 1739 roku. Karta z dziejów karier szlacheckich i sarmackich fundacji

New Excavations of the Early Nomadic Burial Ground at Filippovka (Southern Ural Region, Russia)

From 2004 to 2007, nine burial mounds were excavated at the Filippovka burial ground, located in the Orenburg region of Russia. The most significant burial is a huge royal kurgan (Kurgan 4) that was largely undisturbed. Excavation of this kurgan yielded burial goods of precious metals, examples of sophisticated Animal Style art, and important new information on burial ritual. A depiction of an Achaemenid king on an object found in Kurgan 15 suggests a burial date in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E.; other finds, however, suggest a fourth-century B.C.E. date. In either case, the burial belongs to the Early Sarmatian culture of the southern Ural region and provides significant information on the cultural origin of the southern Ural early nomadic population. The goal of this report is to introduce the finds to western scholars who may not have access to the Russian-language publications of this and other materials from Sarmatia.

The technique of gold inlaid decoration in the 5th-4th centuries BC: silver and iron finds from the early Sarmatian barrows of Filippovka, Southern Urals

The present paper addresses silver and iron objects (iron sword awl, silver quiver hooks, and an iron knife with a silver handle) decorated with inlaid gold strips and plates. The artefacts were excavated recently in the barrows near the village of Filippovka, in the Southern Urals, and were dated to the 5th-4th centuries BC. Typological and stylistic analyses are complemented with the study of technological features of the objects. Analysis under the Analytical Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), carried out during the restoration of the objects, revealed the specific features of Urals gold. Most of the objects analysed represent local forms of the early Sarmatian culture. This technique of gold inlaid decoration was spread by the nomads of the Eurasian steppes from the Altai Mountains in the east to Central Kazakhstan and the Southern Urals in the west during a period between the 7th and the 4th centuries BC; furthermore, the technique is also attested in Achaemenid metalwork. A unique silver black patinated handle of a knife, shaped in the form of a stag, was inspired by the ‘Achaemenid international style’, but the peculiarities of style and the inlaid technique do not exclude the possibility that it could have been manufactured in a provincial Achaemenid workshop for a Sarmatian customer.

“Sarmatianism”

In Polish research, the terms Sarmatia, and Culture (as a political phrase for a line of policy and political designation) are omnipresent and run into the paradigm of Sarmatianism (sarmatyzm) which has been applied to the early modem history of the Polish Lithuanian Union. Looking at manifold sources from over four centuries, this term should either be avoided because of its vagueness or employed in ways which refer to its complex usages. There are at least four different connotations, distinguishable layers reflecting separable ideas: 1. The humanistic of the region Sarmatia from antiquity up to early modem times reaching back to an ancient civilization which was used to legitimize the Polish-Lithuanian-Union. 2. The Origo Idea was a profitable political concept that became part of political programs used by the early-modem monarchy and nobility in foreign and domestic policy. 3. The Sarmatian culture of the Polish nobility was used to unify the 17th century nobility throughout the Union (clothes, gestures, rhetoric). 4. It was also a social and culture political movement and call to arms during the last third of the 18th century that sought to modernize noble elites and bring them closer to western European culture. With the publication of several monographic works after World War II, we can talk about an impressive break-through of this paradigm. In the 1920s and 1930s concepts of a jagelonian idea had been possible. This changed after 1945 when for ideological reasons the cultural heritage of eastern polish regions had been put under a taboo. In this situation the paradigm of Culture was revived because its politics were not incriminated in the Polish People's Republic (PRL). This term could be loaded up with enlightenment ideas and serve as camouflage for the research on the jagelonian idea as well as a label for the obsolete concepts of the elder elites. This is why up to 1989 researchers made use of this paradigm in a broad way but never questioned or clearly defined it. Thus the definition of Culture is not precise. It is used to describe a humanistic educated with its own way of thinking and habits - the every-day life style of the landed nobles and their material situation ― the culture of elites, a political tendency, and a Party. This makes the term itself a Passepartout for cultural history that for analyses and temporal distinction uses mostly political moments (1606/07, 1648/60, 1763/64). Such are the contradictory and inconsistent phenomena in the early modem history of culture of East Central Europe that can in retrospective be encompassed with this one term.

Stable Isotopes (d18O, d13C) of Mollusk Shells in Environmental Interpretations; An Example From Sinop Miocene Succession (Northern TURKEY)

Stable isotope values of mollusk shells representing centain levels in Sarmatian and Tshokrakian units <ithin Miocene succession in Sinop region have been respectively measured as C= between -0.32 and 0.78 and O = between -2.18 and -2.38 C= between-2.61 and 0.79 and O= between -6.46 and -0.10 When these values have been compared with values of mollusk fauna from recent Black Sea C=between - 0.99 and 0.39 and O = between -2.32 and -0.41 ) and with values of surface waters of Black Sea C = between 0 and 1 and O= -2.84 (in average)), it is shown from the stable isotope analysis point of view that Tshokrakion Sea resembles to recent Black Sea and the Sarmatian Sea displays a wide range from normal sea water to brackish waters.

The Year 1905 and the Revival of Polish Culture Between the Neman and the Dnepr

1. INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS: POLISH BORDERLANDS IN THE EAST AND THE POLICY OF RUSSIFICATION The revolution which in 1905 shook Russian Empire (including Polish territories under tsar's domination) has become today only a matter of historical interest. It refers almost exclusively to Congress Kingdom of Researchers rarely pay attention to events taking place in historical part of Poland which directly incorporated into Russia and has been called in traditional historiography Annexed Territories (Ziemie Zabrane). These are present territories of Lithuania, Belarus, most of Ukraine, some parts of Latvia, a small part of Poland and especially such towns as Wilno (Vilnius), Kyiv and also Minsk, Grodno (Hrodna), Kowno (Kaunas), Bialystok, Dyneburg (Daugavpils), Mohylow (Mahileu), and Vitebsk (Vitsebsk). Let us take no account of Kyiv, which seceded from Poland in seventeenth century, when Ukraine came entirely under Russian domination. Let us focus on territories of Lithuania and Belarus (the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, in those days called Northwest Country (Severo-Zapadnyi Krai), which were annexed to Russia in three successive partitions of Poland in years 1772-1795. The awareness of their belonging to Poland still alive at beginning of twentieth century, not only amongst so-called enlightened groups. My elder friend..., Kazimierz Okulicz recollects, was riding a horse somewhere near Smolensk Gate in first decade of twentieth century. When they were going over a small bridge, coachman said, pointing his whip at stream running under bridge, vot tsiaper my praiikhali u Polshchu (Well, we've just arrived in Poland). Polshcha (Poland) a notion broader than Grand Duchy of Lithuania or Crown. In folk terminology, it meant Republic of Poland. Among ordinary people, remembrance of border between Russia and pre-partition Polish Republic* existed until twentieth century.1 Two hundred years ago area of Grand Duchy of Lithuania not on fringes of Poland. On contrary, it is here that geometrical centre of Polish Republic (rather, Polish-Lithuanian Republic), its centre of gravity, located. It is here that gentry made decisions concerning shape of Sarmatian culture, Lithuanian (and Ukrainian) literary movement that produced-as rebellion against Warsaw classicism-the greatest masterpieces of Polish Romanticism. It is not by accident that Adam Mickiewicz called Lithuania centrum polszczyzny (the centre of Polish culture). Yet, Grand Duchy of Lithuania played an active part in Polish culture much longer, until 1864, that is until failure of January 1861 Insurrection.2 Still, from 1834 to 1863 Vilnius fourth-ranked Polish publishing centre after Warsaw, Cracow and Lwow (L'viv).3 We don't have a full register of Russian repressions which after defeat of January Insurrection affected Lithuanian-Belarusian territory. Admittedly, tsarist authorities closed all Polish libraries during Insurrection (by order of 28 March 1863), and soon thereupon entirely banned Polish press, closing (21 March 1864) even Polish-Russian Kurier Wilenski (The Vilnius Daily Paper) and Polish theatres (27 October 1864), and forbade any Polish performances, including singing of Polish songs in public. A few months after final suppression of Insurrection, Investigating Commission of General Tsylov set up, which within fifteen months closed all Polish bookshops and publishing houses in Vilnius. Then on 22 December 1865 an order given which forbade purchase of land by the people of Polish origin in all five provinces (gubernii) on Lithuanian-Belarusian-Ukrainian territories (while Poles could purchase land freely in Russia). Finally, in February 1866 speaking Polish forbidden in public and soon information plates appeared with inscription govorit' po-pol'ski vospreshchaetsia (speaking Polish forbidden). …

The Sarmatian Walls of Uxama

The Sarmatian Walls of Uxama

Russian-Italian Computer Assisted Investigations in Sarmatian Archaeology

Russian-Italian Computer Assisted Investigations in Sarmatian Archaeology

Bo Stig Hansen, Michael Reichardt Hansen, Udo Pletat and Rudi Studer: An abstract model of a distributed office system, Institute fuer Informatik, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, 1985

The article is devoted to the Chinese mirrors found in the burials of the nomads of Asian Sarmatia. The typology and chronology of mirrors is presented, the earliest of which dates back to the period of the Warring States, but most of them, dating back to the 1st century BC – 2nd century AD. In the complexes of the second half of the 1st century BC – the first half of the 1st century AD the number of Chinese items in Asiatic Sarmatia is increasing. They are represented, among others, by two mirrors of the Western Han type, which come from the Lower Volga and Don regions; they are not known in the South Urals. In the complexes of the second half of the 1st– the first half of the 2nd century AD the Chinese mirrors are much more common. As before, they are not known in the Urals, but they are also represented in the Kuban and Lower Volga, and especially in the Lower Don region. In the burials of the late Sarmatian period of the late 2nd – middle / second half of the 3rd century AD Chinese mirrors are relatively abundant in the Urals, where the mapping of finds allows us to distinguish two local groups (1 – South Urals: Lebedevka and burial grounds in the Ilek river basin; 2 - South Bashkiria, interfluve of the Sakmara and the Urals rivers, and the Trans-Urals), while further to the west – in the Lower Volga and Don regions, they generally ceased to fall, only two mirrors are known outside the South Urals – in Trans-Kuban and Central Ciscaucasia. The issue of deliberate damage to mirrors is specially considered.Is it possible to consider the Chinese bronze mirrors as trade items? If we assume that they belonged to the items of trade along the Silk Road, then two conclusions following from the dating of the finds should be taken into consideration. Firstly, these mirrors were not distributed to the ancient centers of the North Pontic area and further to the territory of the Roman provinces. Thus, the way of the mirrors ended in the steppe. Moreover, starting from the second half of the 2nd century AD (late Sarmatian culture) Chinese mirrors cease to fall to the west of the Urals – their finds are unknown neither in the Lower Volga region, nor on the Don. This means that the connection between the distribution of the Chinese mirrors and the functioning of the northern branch of the Silk Road is unlikely.

Correction: The Sarmatians.

Correction: The Sarmatians.

The Sarmatians.

The Sarmatians.

The Sarmatians

The Sarmatians