Contents    1-2\2002

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Editorial note 4
Tribes and Peoples 6
Lysenko N.N. The Siraces: Their Ethnic Origin 6
Articles, Publications, Notes 17
Zhitnikov V.G., Ilyukov L.S. New Early Metal Age Sites of the Lower Don Right Bank 17
Glebov V.P. Coin Containing Burial from the Shaumian Cemetery and the Middle-Sarmatian Culture Chronology 28
Bezuglov S.I., Tolochko I.V. New Data for the Late Tanais Necropolis Characteristics 42
Bezuglov S.I. Data Characterising Some Taman Imitations of Byzantine Silver Coins of the 10th – 11th Centuries 51
Pyankov À.V., Tsokur I.V. A Stone Anthropomorphous Sculpture of the Labinsk Museum 59
Kiyashko V.Ya. New Data on Previous Finds 63
Aptekarev A.Z. A Panticapaeum Coin of the Third Fourth of the 3rd century B.C. with a Unique Overstrike Variant 66
From the History of Don-land Archaeology 68
Flerov V.S. The 80th Anniversary of Yuri Pavlovich Yefanov 68
Archaeological Masterpieces73
Pyankov À.V. A Silver Double-Plate Fibula with an Anthropomorphous Piece of the Bzhid 1 Burial Ground (Krasnodar Territory, Tuapse District) 73
Archaeological Mysteries 84
Moshinsky A.P. A Pectoral of the Tolstaya Mogila as a Tsar Power Symbol 84
Anniversaries 89
Critical Essays and Bibliography 91
I.V.Sergatskov Sarmatian Burial Mounds of the Ilovlya River Guguev Yu.K., Glebov V.P., 91
Abbreviations 108
Contents 111

Summary

N.N.Lysenko
The Siraces: the Problems of Ethnic Origin

The article is dedicated to an important ethno-political formation of the North Caucasus existing in the Hellenistic time, the Siraces’ tribal union. The author analyses the most remarkable episodes within the political history of the Siraces. A wide range of sources became involved in the investigation of the question of the Siraces’ origin.

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V.G.Zhitnikov, L.S.Ilyukov
New Early Metal Age Sites of the Lower Don Right Bank

Six Eneolithic burials have been discovered at the Lower Don right bank, Konstantinovsky District, near khutor Kastyrka, in the mound cemetery Kastyrsky VIII. The graves contained writhed skeletons. Some burials revealed earthenware of the Maikopskaya type, bronze and silver goods. A single burial, alongside with Maikopskaya pottery, contained a pointed base pot with cord-decoration, typical for the steppe-zone Srednestogovskaya culture. These finds testify to close contacts between the Maikopskaya and the Srednestogovskaya cultures during the Eneolithic Period at the Lower Don land.

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V.P.Glebov
A Coin Containing Burial from the Shaumian Cemetery and the Middle-Sarmatian Culture Chronology

In 1996 Middle-Sarmatian barrow 13 of the Shaumian burial ground was investigated. The mound contained a single robbed burial. Among the grave goods remaining intact after the robbery, there were three bronze coins with overstrikes belonging to tsar Asander’s reign in the Bosphorus, a bow-shaped fibula, a bronze scoop of the late La Tene, fragments of a silver kantharos, a red-varnish lagynos, grey-polished jugs, etc. The burial could be most probably made in the last third of the 1st century B.C. Due to this early date, we propose to observe the Middle-Sarmatian culture of the Volga-and-Don region as a period slightly older than before. The analysis of the earliest Middle-Sarmatian burials demonstrates that most of them probably date back to the last decades of the 1st century B.C. The antique written sources mention the Alans, i.e. the probable carriers of the Middle-Sarmatian culture, as late as in the 1st century A.D. only, while the indirect evidence of the written sources confirm an earlier dating of their appearance.

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S.I.Bezuglov, I.V.Tolochko
New Data for the Late Tanais Necropolis Characteristics

This article is a publication of materials of the Great Migration time and obtained during the Tanais eastern necropolis excavations in 2000. The above materials significantly expand our knowledge of the topography, chronology and cultural-ethnographic belonging of the Tanais burial ground, which corresponds to the late period in the history of this town. One of the published burials belongs to the late 4th – early 5th centuries, while another can be referred to the second half of the 5th – first half of the 6th centuries A.D. The new materials permit much more confidence in characterising the western (east-Germanic) direction of the cultural-historical links of the late Tanais population.

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S.I. Bezuglov
Some Taman Imitations of Byzantine Silver Coins of the 10th – 11th Centuries

The author investigates an atypical phenomenon in the monetary business of the Old Russian Tmutarakan Princedom, the issue of the silver coinage imitating Byzantine prototypes. The article analyses the peculiarities of the Tmutarakan Princedom international relations and internal arrangement, which were reflected in mintage. Proposed is a hypothesis stating that each episode of the Taman mintage referring to the Old Russian period (late 10th – late 11th centuries) may be presumably linked with synchronous political events of a significant scale.

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À.V.Pyankov, I.V.Tsokur
A Stone Anthropomorphous Sculpture of the Labinsk Museum

This article is a publication of a stone anthropomorphous sculpture kept at the museum of the town of Labinsk. The statue was given to archaeologists by the locals in 1991. It was preserved as two large fragments, which in their turn have serious damages. Analyzing the statue’s iconography, the authors refer the sculpture to the Medieval times. Its creation is most probably linked with the Polovtsian or Mongolian nomadic communities.

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V.Ya.Kiyashko
New Data on Previous Finds

The article is a publication of a collection of 12 flint goods referred to the late Eneolithic Period. The goods originate from the ruined site (Rostov Region, Azov District), where a number of such finds were made, quite occasionally as well. The new finds permit to specify the cultural-chronological details of this unique site.

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À.V.Pyankov
A Silver Double-Plate Fibula with an Anthropomorphous Piece of the Bzhid 1 Burial Ground (Krasnodar Territory, Tuapse District)

This article is a publication of burial 57 of the early Medieval burial ground Bzhid 1 (Krasnodar Territory). The most expressive artefact of this burial is a silver double-plate fibula. The fibula cover piece is provided with a relief drawing of a small human figure. The author believes that the most possible dating of the fibula and the burial is the last third of the 5th – the early 6th century A.D.

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A.P.Moshinsky
A Pectoral of the Tolstaya Mogila as a Tsar Power Symbol

The Tolstaya Mogila pectoral is a masterpiece of the Scythian jewellers’ art. This sketch offers a new aspect in the interpretation of a long and well known to any research worker central scene of the upper frieze of the pectoral. The author comes to a conclusion that this is an illustration to the concluding episode of a variant of a Scythian genealogical legend, namely the moment when power is granted by a primordial ancestor to his son. This episode did not reach us in the literary sources.

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