Between the Great Steppe and the Great Empire: Monuments of the Saltovo-Mayaky Archaeological Culture in Crimea (Seventh - Tenth Centuries C.E.) (20 min)

Presenters

Viacheslav Baranov, Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Abstract

The Crimean Peninsula has been on the border of two worlds for thousands of years: the barbarian world of the Great Steppe and the world of the great Mediterranean civilizations. The lack of written sources, especially characteristic of the so-called Dark Ages, puts archaeological sources in the foreground, both in the reconstruction of the material culture of the peninsula's population and in more complicated historical problems. About 500 archaeological monuments dating from the late seventh to the second half of the 10th century are known on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula. Most of them are attributed to the Saltovo-Mayaky archaeological culture. The analysis of archaeological sources allows us to divide them into two groups, eastern and southwestern, which are clearly distinguished by ceramic traditions.

The eastern group is located in the eastern and southeastern regions of Crimea, where a new population appeared in the late seventh century. The ceramic complex of this group is characterized by gray-clay kitchen pottery decorated with linear and wavy motifs applied with a multirow stamp. The southwestern group occupies the territory of southern, southwestern, western, and central Crimea. The ceramic complex of this population is divided clearly into two distinct groups, which are usually present in different proportions in the same assemblages. One component of the assemblage is very similar to the ceramic complex of the eastern group. But there are also brown clay stucco and ceramic vessels decorated with incised waves, which are not known in the eastern group or other Saltovo-Mayaky sites of eastern Europe.

Both groups are probably associated with a population of varied origins that appeared on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula in the late seventh century, at the same time as this region entered the sphere of influence of the Khazar Khaganate.