Anders Alexandra – Lőrinczy Gábor szerk.: A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Archaeologica 12. (Szeged, 2011)
László BARTOSIEWICZ: Ex Oriente equus... A Brief History of Horses between the Early Bronze Age and the Middle Ages
László BARTOSIEWICZ Hungary. The term nomad was first applied by Herodotus (5 t h BC) who described Scythians as "not cultivators but pastoralists ". Nomadism, however, is more than herding, and in many cultures it implies a tradition to which horses were of focal importance. Semi-nomadism combined animal husbandry with cultivation as many steppe communities included sedentary agriculturalists. The term semi-nomadic, however, would suggest a linear evolution from mobile pastoralism to sedentism that has evidently never been the case (MATOLCSI 1982, 303). Nomadism may be rather seen as a loss of harmony between pastoral and agricultural economy, alternatively explained by climatic and political changes. "Real" nomads covered long distances in search of seasonal graze and practicing no land cultivation. This form of pastoralism is precarious, it is dependent on the efficiency of alternating between habitats as well as the quality and sizes of pastures (KHAZANOV 1994). Horses play a key role in increasing the speed of movement required by this way of life. The functional aspects of mobile pastoralism have resulted in some striking similarities between the material cultures and even mentalities of peoples adapted to the vast Eurasian steppe belt. Mobility, intensified by horses, helped enhance contacts and exchange between pastoralist groups across the region. Superficial similarities between equestrian cultures therefore cannot be taken at face value, while differences in attitudes towards horse may be of significance. Relationships between the three aspects of horse exploitation (food, mount and symbol) varied over the long time span and large area briefly reviewed here. Food remains may equally originate from mundane or ritual horse meat consumption during feasts; a war horse buried as a companion animal was also a symbol of wealth and power, while "ritual" deposits of skulls or feet may be sometimes be mistaken for tanning waste (BARTOSIEWICZ 2009, 108, Fig. 8) Traditionally, the chronology of equestrian pastoral cultures in Eurasia was approached on the basis of archaeological analogies between imported objects. It is, however, exactly the intensity by which these high-status artefacts were circulated that has been most directly influenced by the emergence of horse back riding. Measuring this intensification using the relative typochronology of artistic styles therefore is prone to circular reasoning. However, the most famous Scythian monuments in the East European steppe, for example, had been excavated without preserving forensic evidence for future 1 4C dating, as that method was not even been discovered at the time. Monuments more recently recovered in the Asian territories yielded materials suitable for 1 4C dating, mostly samples of wood from the inner structures of burial mounds. Thus the absolute dating of "nomadic cultures" in Southern Siberia, Central Asia and the Altay region began in the 1960s (ALEKSEEV ET AL. 2001). In Eastern Europe, horse remains originating from the Bronze Age Catacomb-grave-culture (2500-1200 BC) provide the earliest evidence of the importance of these animals. In the lower Volga region, skulls from 40 horses were deposited in a burial (ANTHONY 1997). It remains a question, however, to what extent horses may have been used in transport and combat at this early time. Half a millennium later, the first mounted troops conventionally identified as those of the Cimmerians appeared at a time when a new type of bridle cheek bit became commonly used between Central Europe and the Caucasus (DIETZ 2006, 157). These equestrian pastoralists originally inhabited the region north of the Caucasus and the Black Sea during the 8 t h-7 t h c. BC. It is still unknown how much influence Cimmerians had beyond Eastern Europe since aside from the occurrence of luxury artifacts (weapons, horse tackle and jewelry), their hypothesized population movements way into the Carpathian Basin could not be reconfirmed (METZNERNEBELSICK 2000, 165). During the Iron Age, Scythian tribes, documented both historically and archaeologically, included both equestrian nomads and agriculturalists. Their leaders were buried in tumuli , sometimes with dozens of horses. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating of the European Scythian monuments and museum specimens began during the 1990s. A series of over 200 1 4C assays on Scythian materials from both the eastern and western sections of the Eurasian Steppe provided a unified radiocarbon time scale. The Scythian Cultures in Europe emerged centuries after their predecessors in Asia, which is consonant with current archaeological theories (ALEKSEEV ET AL. 2001). The three periods of Scythian history thus largely correspond to the typochronological classification outlined by GRYAZNOV (1979) based on the typological synchronization of sites in the Altai Mountains and the Pontic Region, including the 128
