Folia archeologica 53.
István Vida: Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum, Hungary, Budapest, Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum, Vol. III. Moesia Inferior, Supplement 1, Nicopolis ad Istrum
98 L.T. YABLONSKY head and its spike allows us to exactly reconstruct the length of the spear of the Sarmatian warrior: 3.2 m. We can also reconstruct in details the characteristic features of Sarmatian quiver. Our knowledge on heavy armour is now completed with a new find (scale arm). As a result, today we have at our disposal very reliable data on the outlook of the Early Sarmatian heavy armed warrior: there was a smithed iron helmet 011 his head with a nose- and cheek-piece. A leather based scale armour defended the body. He had a quiver woven of twigs and covered with leather, decorated with an umbo, an arm-belt with a buckle for crossing the belts and a richly decorated quiver hook, a long spear with a massive head and spike, a short iron akinakessword on the right hip, an iron axe, a quiver for bow and arrows (sometimes more than 200 pieces) on the left hip. The whole of this image reminds a picture from a novel on the Medieval West European knights, but their Sarmatian „prototypes" are 2000 years older! Burials of horses and remains of sacrificial feast, including the eating of horse (bones and skulls at the foot of the burial mound) make us recall that Claudius Ptolemaeus (V,3, 16) mentioned Sarmatians as hvpophagi, that is to say „people eating horses". The vertically sticked spearhead and big heaps of twigs at the edges of the burial surface remind us of Herodotus' information on the burial rite of nomadic Scythians (true, that he mentioned a sticked iron sword). It is very important that „standard" finds from barrow 4 (arrow- and spearheads, swords and daggers, beads and earrings) have analogies in other, less rich barrows of the cemetery. Beside that, the situation of the burials and goods in barrow 4, around the sacrificial fire-place precisely corresponds to the situation that we earlier recovered in the burial, made at the ancient surface of barrow 15 in the same cemetery. There, among other finds, we unearthed a part of a golden decoration depicting an Achaemenid king. Judging from analogies - depictions 011 seals from the Persepolis palace and other finds from the territory of ancient Achaemenid empire, this find can be dated to the second half of the 5th centurv B.C.i* Speaking about the significance of 2006 excavations, we also have to emphasise that beside the artefacts, we got a series of paleoanthropologies and paleozoological finds, made samples of buried soil, wood, organic materials from the gravepits and coverings, that will serve the aims of soil analysis, palinology and microbiology. Hopefully, these examinations will supplement archaeological data with that of scientilical results. Museum collections of Russia became richer with a large series of outstanding splendid artefacts having no analogies in any museums of the world. There is still a big and thorough work to do, in order to interpret the varied and numerous material found at the excavation, but even today we can definitely state that an archaeological discovery was made that for a long time will attract the attention of both archaeologists and a wide circle of people interested in history. 1 2 BALAKHVANTSEV, YABLONSKY 2007.
