Sauromatian culture

The Sauromatian culture (Russian: Савроматская культура, romanized: Savromatskaya kulʹtura) was an Iron Age culture of horse nomads in the area of the lower Volga River in southern Russia, dated to the 6th to 4th centuries BCE.

For the later people descended in part from the Sauromatians, see Sarmatians.
The location of the Sauromatian culture (labelled on the map as "Sarmatians") in the Caucasian and Volga steppe.

The name of this culture originates from the Sauromatians (Ancient Greek: Σαυρομάται, romanized: Sauromatai; Latin: Sauromatae [sau̯ˈrɔmat̪ae̯]), an ancient Scythian people mentioned by Graeco-Roman authors, and with whom it is identified.

Origins

The Sauromatian culture emerged during the 7th century BCE[1][2] out of elements of the Bronze Age Srubnaya culture who cooperated closely with the neighbouring Andronovo culture.[3]

The Sauromatian culture developed under the influence of the western Ciscaucasian group of the Scythian culture, due to which it exhibited many resemblances to this latter group of the Scythian culture.[1]

From the east, the Sauromatian culture was affected by the culture of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, whose influence reached them through Central Asia. This Achaemenid influence was most prominent in the north-eastern part of Sauromatian territory during the 6th century BCE.[4]

Location and identification

The Sauromatian culture covered an area ranging from the eastern foothills of the lower Don river in the west to the lower Volga river in the east, and from the southern Ural Mountains in the north to the eastern foothills of the Caucasus in the south.[1]

The Sauromatian culture was divided into two main local groups: a Lower Volga group located between the Volga River, the Don River, and the Transvolga; and a Samara-Ural group. As can be inferred from their closeness, close kin connections existed between the Lower Volga and the Samara-Ural groups.[3]

The Lower Volga group

The section of the Lower Volga group of the Sauromatian culture located between the Don and Volga rivers corresponds to the Sauromatians, an ancient Iranic equestrian nomadic people mentioned by Graeco-Roman authors.[3][2]

The Sauromatians may have been the Saⁱrima- (𐬯𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬨𐬀) people mentioned in the Yašts as one of the five peoples following the Zoroastrian religion, along with the Aⁱriia- (𐬀𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀), Tūⁱriia- (𐬙𐬏𐬌𐬭𐬌𐬌𐬀), 𐬛𐬁𐬵𐬀 (Dāha-), and Sāinu- (𐬯𐬁𐬌𐬥𐬎), although this identification is still uncertain.[2][5]

Political development

The Sauromatian tribe first formed during the 7th century BCE, after the Scythians had migrated westwards and become the masters of the Pontic–Caspian steppe. The historian Marek Jan Olbrycht has suggested that the Sauromatians might have been a Scythian group who migrated from Media during the period of Scythian presence in Western Asia, after which they merged with Maeotians who had a matriarchal culture. These early Sauromatians lived in the area of the Don river, near the Sea of Azov in the North Caucasus,[2] and their western neighbours were the Scythians proper.[1]

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Sauromatians spoke a "corrupt form" of the Scythian language, which might be explained by the influence of the Andronovo culture in the development of the Sauromatian culture.[3]

During the 6th to 5th centuries BCE, the Sauromatians were constituted of either a number of tribes or of a single tribe sharing a common ethnic identity, and united into a single polity bounded to the west by the Don river and to the east by the Don river. By the end of the 5th century BCE, groups of the Sauromatians had moved to the west and settled around Lake Maeotis along the Royal Scythians and the Maeotians.[3][2][6]

The Sauromatians maintained peaceful relations with their western neighbours, the Scythians, who were also an Iranic equestrian nomadic people. A long road starting in Scythia and continuing towards the eastern regions of Asia existed thanks to these friendly relations.[3]

When the Persian Achaemenid king Darius I attacked the Scythians in 513 BCE, the Sauromatian king Scopasis supported the Scythians.[3]

During the 6th century BCE, related Iranic nomads from the Central Asian steppes migrated westwards into the country of the Sauromatians, due to which the bulk of the Sauromatians retreated to the west, in western Ciscaucasia.[1] Due to this, the Scythians progressively lost their territories in the Kuban region to the Sauromatians over the late 6th century BCE, beginning with the territory to the east of the Laba river, and then the whole Kuban territory.[7]

By the end of the 6th century BCE, the Scythians had lost their territories in the Kuban Steppe and had been forced to retreat into the Pontic Steppe, except for its westernmost part which included the Taman peninsula,[8] where the Scythian Sindi tribe formed a ruling class over the native Maeotians, due to which this country was named Sindica. By the 5th century BCE, Sindica was the only place in the Caucasus where the Scythian culture survived.[7][9]

The retreating Sauromatians continued to move westwards, migrating into Scythia itself[10] over the course of 550 and 500 BCE and were absorbed by the Pontic Scythians with whom they mingled. A large number of settlements in the valleys of the steppe rivers were destroyed as a result of these various migratory movements.[8][9]

The retreat of the Scythians from the Kuban Steppe and the arrival of the Sauromatian immigrants into the Pontic steppe over the course of the late 6th to early 5th centuries BCE caused significant material changes in the Scythian culture soon after the Persian campaign which are not attributable to a normal evolution of it. Some of the changes were derived from the Sauromatian culture of the Volga steppe, while others originated among the Kuban Scythians, thus resulting in the sudden appearance within the lower Dnipro region of a fully formed Scythian culture with no local forerunners, and which included a notable increase in the number of Scythian funerary monuments.[11][9]

The Samara-Ural group

The Samara-Ural group of the Sauromatian culture has not yet been identified with any population recorded by ancient authors.[3][2]

Characteristics

Sites belonging to the Sauromatian culture consist of kurgans whose contents are poorer than those of Scythian burials, attesting of the presence of less extensive class stratification among the Sauromatians as compared to their western Scythian neighbours.[3]

The remains of the Sauromatian culture consist nearly only of graves, which were themselves mostly secondary burials that had reused older kurgans. The grave goods present in these burials characterised the Sauromatians as well-armed cavalry warriors, although many of them appear to have also fought on foot.[1]

The Sauromatian kurgans of the 5th century BCE found in the southern foothills of the Ural Mountains were, however, more developed, large and rich, and belonged to a military aristocracy. One example of such rich Sauromatian sites is the Pyatimary group, located on the Ilek river.[3]

The Sauromatian kurgans of the Volga area were instead all poorer, and none of them possessed the stature and richness of the Ural kurgans. This is an attestation of the clan structure of Sauromatian society subsisting for longer in the region between the Don and the Volga, while the tribal aristocracy in this area was weaker in both economic and military terms as compared to the aristocracy near the Urals.[3]

Out of all military Sauromatian burials which contain weapons, twenty percent of the graves belong to women warriors, with this relatively large number attesting of the veracity of Graeco-Roman authors' claims that Sauromatian women held a special role and participated in military operations and in social life. Women's burials occupied the central position and were the richest in multiple Sauromatian funerary complexes.[3][10]

The presence of pedestalled sacrificial altars made of stone or flat stone dishes with raised rims in female Sarmatian graves also confirms that claims of Graeco-Roman authors that Sarmatian women were warriors as well as priestesses. These priestesses held a very important status in Sauromatian society.[3][10]

Demise
Main article: Sarmatians

The Lower Volga Group of the Sauromatian culture came to an end when, in the 4th to 3rd centuries BCE, they were conquered by nomadic Central Asian populations from the Ural foothills region regions east of the Urals who moved into the lower Volga region and the trans-Ural steppes.[3][2]

The Sauromatians joined these new conquerors and were initially able to preserve their separate identity, although their name, modified into "Sarmatians" eventually came to be applied to the whole of the new people formed out of these migrations, whose constituent tribes were the Aorsi, Roxolani, Alans, and the Iazyges. Despite the Sarmatians having a similar name to the Sauromatians, ancient authors distinguished between the two, and Sarmatian culture did not directly develop from the Sauromatian culture; the core of the Sarmatians was instead composed of the newly arrived migrants from the southern Ural foothills.[3][2][6]

References
  1. Sulimirski 1985, p. 189.
  2. Olbrycht 2000.
  3. Melyukova 1990.
  4. Sulimirski 1985, p. 187.
  5. Vogelsang 1993.
  6. Batty 2007, p. 225-236.
  7. Sulimirski & Taylor 1991, p. 572.
  8. Sulimirski 1985, pp. 195.
  9. Ivantchik 2018.
  10. Sulimirski 1985, p. 190.
  11. Sulimirski & Taylor 1991, p. 568-573.

Bibliography
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