Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age

by Leonid T. Yablonsky (Editor)

This anthology focuses on the Scythian, Sauromatian, Sarmatian, and Saka Iron Age nomads who inhabited the Eurasian steppes in the first millennium BC. Written by ten of the foremost archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology, Russian Academy of Sciences, the material presents a survey of Soviet archaeology from 1960 to1990. The majority of the material, including many illustrations, has never been published in English before this volume.

Genres: History, Archaeology, Nonfiction

431 pages, Hardcover

First published December 22, 1995

Reviews

[Nyr-Sigtar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age is a sweeping and comprehensive synthesis of the Scythian, Sarmatian, and Saka worlds, bringing together decades of Soviet and post-Soviet scholarship that has long been inaccessible to Western readers. The volume covers an extraordinary geographical and chronological range, from the Black Sea steppes to the Altai Mountains, and the chapters on burial practices, animal style art, and the social organisation of nomadic societies are uniformly excellent. The detailed discussion of the Arzhan Kurgan in Tuva, with its hundreds of sacrificed horses and elaborate wooden chamber, is a highlight, offering a vivid glimpse into the cosmology and power structures of early steppe elites. The prose, however, is often dense and translation can be clunky, and the volume's structure - a series of regional surveys rather than a coherent narrative - can feel disjointed. The treatment of the Scythian-Saka relationship is also somewhat dated, and the volume does not fully engage with more recent debates about the nature of nomadism and its relationship to settled states. Still, for anyone interested in the archaeology of the steppes, this is an indispensable resource, and the wealth of archaeological data presented here will be mined by scholars for decades.