THE BEGINNING OF HERODOTUS’ SCYTHIA: WAR, CLIMATE, ECONOMY (Dniester-Danube interfluve in the second half of the 6th — first half of the 5th century BC)

Abstract

The period of the late 6th — early 5th centuries BC was the initial stage of the history of classical (Herodotus’) Scythia. Scythian culture extended across a vast territory, and naturally certain regions developed distinct local features. This paper aims to highlight the regional specificity of Scythian presence in the Dniester-Danube Interfluve and to outline the areas of influence associated with different groups within the Scythian cultural sphere. In the territory under study Scythian / Scythoid burials are not numerous and do not demonstrate the uniformity. This is evidence of the tribal (or possibly ethnic) heterogeneity of population. These funerary sites may be classified to three main groups based on the main features of burial practice. Accordingly, the territory of the Dniester-Danube interfluve can be divided into three «cultural zones». Zone I. Barrows with «burns»: the mounds cover a probable cremation places marked by layers of burnt soil («burns») and cremated human remains. Such barrows are few and widely dispersed and they appear to trace a trade route connecting Northern Dobrudja (particularly the Hellenic centers of the Western Pontic coast) with the northwestern Pontic region — Hinterland (Middle Dniester region?) and Greek colonies. This route was used and possibly controlled during the 6th (?) century BC by the Early Scythian culture people migrated to the Lower Danube region from the Middle Dniester / Middle Dnieper forest-steppe. Trade caravans may have been gathered at a «checkpoint» — nearby the archaeological complex of Telitsa — Chelik Dere. Zone II. Barrowless inhumation graves (meridian direction of skeletons). These burials, discovered in the modern forest-steppe region of Romanian Moldova, have the parallels in Northern Dobrudja. Hence the second «zone» extends from Northern Dobrudja to approximately the middle part of the Siret-Prut interfluve. From the late (?) 6th century BC onward, new inhabitants of these lands seem to have replaced the earlier «mound-rising» population. Due to control of the trade and strategically important routes between the Western and Northern Black Sea coast, as well as the Hellenic world and the hinterland tribes, the settlement (perhaps formerly a winter encampment?) in the Chelik River valley evolved into a local administrative center, similar to the Elizavetinskaya hillfort on the eastern Black Sea coast. Zone III. Barrowless inhumation graves (latitude direction of skeletons) in the Lower Dniester region (Dănceni, Suruceni, Mayaki); barrows are few and date to the final of the period under study. This zone stretches from the upper reaches of the Dniester estuary to the south border of the modern forest-steppe. Since the second quarter of the 5th century BC nomadic activity shifted southward, and extended to the Danube, while the Dniester forest-steppe the Geto-Thracian culture has been spread. By the late 5th century BC the population of the region increased significantly due to another wave of eastern nomads. Cremation barrows reappeared possibly introduced by the migrants from the Middle Dnieper forest-steppe. The influx of nomadic pastoralists in addition with more favorable climatic conditions, predetermined the development of the southern part of the Dniester-Danube steppe. Nomads began to settle far away from the large river basins; their presence is proved by necropolises and camps along small rivers of Bessarabia, which hydrological regime is entirely determined by local physical and geographical conditions. Thus, the internal (within the Dniester-Danube interfluve) migrations, roaming routes of mobile pastoralists and, as a consequence, «migrations» of the main bulk of their burials, expansion and contraction of their area — the whole chain of these changes was often determined by not military-political events but by natural factors and needs of nomadic cattle breeding.