Scytho-Siberian art

In the earlier period Scythian art included very vigorously modelled stylised animal figures, shown singly or in combat, that had a long-lasting and very wide influence on other Eurasian cultures as far apart as China and the European Celts.

The mixture of the two cultures in terms of the background of the artists, the origin of the forms and styles, and the possible history of the objects, gives rise to complex questions.

[15] Other influences from urbanized civilizations such as those of Persia and China, and the mountain cultures of the Caucasus, also affected the art of their nomadic neighbours.

[17] The Scythians worked in a wide variety of materials such as gold, wood, leather, bone, bronze, iron, silver and electrum.

Clothes and horse-trappings were sewn with small plaques in metal and other materials, and larger ones, including some of the most famous, probably decorated shields or wagons.

Wool felt was used for highly decorated clothes, tents and horse-trappings, and an important nomad mounted on his horse in his best outfit must have presented a very colourful and exotic sight.

They also established permanent settlements such as a site in Belsk, Ukraine believed to be the Scythian capital Gelonus with craft workshops and Greek pottery prominent in the ruins.

These make it clear that important ancient nomads and their horses, tents, and wagons were very elaborately fitted out in a variety of materials, many brightly coloured.

[20] Steppes jewellery features various animals including stags, cats, birds, horses, bears, wolves and mythical beasts.

In some cases these bronze animal figures when sewn onto stiff leather jerkins & belts, helped to act as armour.

[23] The populations of the Srubnaya and Andronovo cultures from whom the Scythians were descended used solely geometric patterns on their pottery and cheek-pieces made of bone.

[31] These technological and artistic exchanges attest to the magnitude of communication networks between China and the Mediterranean, even long before the establishment of the Silk Road.

Particularly common during this period was the image of griffin-rams, that is of eagles with ram horns, which was absent outside of the range of the Scythian culture, and might have represented the fārnā.

[23] Examples of this West Asian-influenced art from the 6th century BC were found in western Ciscaucasian burials, as well as in the Melgunov Kurgan in what is presently Ukraine, and in the Vettersfelde Treasure trove in what is modern-day Poland.

[36] The "Animal Style" style was initially restricted to the Scythian upper classes, and the Scythian lower classes in both West Asia and the Pontic Steppe had not yet adopted it, with the latter group's bone cheek-pieces and bronze buckles being plain and without decorations, while the Pontic groups were still using Srubnaya- and Andronovo-type geometric patterns.

[37] The Scythian stelae representing armed warriors that were erected over burial mounds, known as kurgan stelae, at this time were sculpted so as to depict faces with almond-shaped eyes, moustaches but not beards, arms, and sometimes phalli; the figures on these sculptures usually wear torcs and belts and sometimes helmets, as well as weapons such as swords, axes, gōrytoi, and more rarely whips.

[23] At the same time, anthropomorphic imagery started appearing in Scythian art itself, such as a "Mistress of Animals" from the Oleksandropilskiy kurhan [uk] or a gryphonomachy scene on a terminal from Slonivska Blyznytsia.

[23] Kurgans are large mounds that are obvious in the landscape and a high proportion have been plundered at various times; many may never have had a permanent population nearby to guard them.

Elsewhere the desertification of the steppe has brought once-buried small objects to lie on the surface of the eroded land, and many Ordos bronzes seem to have been found in this way.

Catherine the Great was so impressed from the material recovered from the kurgans or burial mounds that she ordered a systematic study be made of the works.

[41] One of the first sites discovered by modern archaeologists were the kurgans Pazyryk, Ulagan district of the Altay Republic, south of Novosibirsk.

The six burials come from the early 1st century AD (a coin of Tiberius is among the finds) and though their cultural context is unfamiliar, it may relate to the Indo-Scythians who had created an empire in north India.

There at a late date in Scythian culture (c. 250 - 225 BC), a recently nomadic aristocratic class was gradually adopting the agricultural life-style of their subjects.