Istvánovits Eszter: International Connections... (Jósa András Múzeum Kiadványai 47. Aszód-Nyíregyháza, 2001)
Halina Dobrzanska: Contacts between Sarmatians and the Przeworsk Culture community
heads of weapons with wooden shafts are often carved with Sarmatian tamga-signs, occurring alongside runes (fig. 5). The tamga-signs must have been adopted as magic or cult symbols from the North Pontic cultural milieu where they originated. However, in accordance with the local custom, they were carved on weapons. To complement the image, we could point to some characteristics of steppe cultures, such as the burial with a horse found in the cemetery in Grzybów and the arrowheads that were found on the same site (fig. 6: 1). All these occurrences might have been a consequence of the turmoil caused by the Marcomannic Wars and the resulting migrations of various peoples. The majority of the above-mentioned facts must have been synchronous with the appearance of the Goths in the North Pontic region, which probably occurred at the b eginning of the 3 RD c. (SULIMIRSKI 1979, 146; MACZYNSKA 1996, 61, 289). In the face of the "Gothic" invasions into the Sarmatian territories in Ukraine and Moldavia, the people of the Przeworsk Culture living in South and Central Poland and the Sarmatians living in the basins of the Prut and Dniester rivers might have drawn closer together. Neither can we reject the possibility that at that time there were small groups of Sarmatians inhabiting the territories of the Przeworsk Culture and undergoing assimilation in the local cultural environment. We must emphasize that in the existing archaeological sources there is better evidence for contacts between the community of the Przeworsk Culture and the Sarmatians occupying the northwestern part of the Black Sea basin than with those living on the Great Hungarian Plain. In this context, we ought to draw particular attention to a shield-shaped brooch (fig. 6:2), covered with white enamel and decorated with the image of a stag, found in grave 345 at Grabice, the cemetery of the Luboszyce Culture (DOMANSKI 1992, 78, rys. 1: 10, 79), which can be dated to the times of the Marcomannic Wars or shortly thereafter. Similar brooches with the image of a deer are known in the culture of the Sarmatian Jazyges who occupied the Great Hungarian Plain (VADAY 1989, 82-83, 306, Abb. 14: 11). As far as contacts between the Sarmatians and the Maslomçcz group in Southeastern Poland, Kokowski (KOKOWSKI 1998, 18) has placed them in the 2 ND to 4 TH c. and related them to the Jazyges. A lack of interest among Polish researchers in the problems concerning Sarmatians within the context of the culture studies of communities inhabiting our territories during the Roman Period has resulted in an unsatisfactory state of knowledge concerning contacts between the tribes living in the widely-understood northwestern region of the Black Sea and the Great Hungarian Plain. Improved knowledge of those contacts depends on further fieldwork and studies on hitherto unpublished or wrongly interpreted archaeological sources from the territory of Poland. It is also contingent on progress in the study of Sarmatian peoples inhabiting the northern and northwestern territories of the Black Sea basin and the Great Hungarian Plain. In the context of our discussion, it is of particular interest how the Sarmatians related to a cultural milieu that was alien to them, a process that was accompanied by the tendency to adopt some of the alien elements. For instance, some Dacian ceramics can be found in Sarmatian burials from the 3 RD c. on the Wallachian Plain. 1 1 G. A. Niculescu: personal communication.
