W-1-2013-BLOK-pr.qxd
UKRAINE
08.04.2013
13:27
Page 36
DISCOVERING
Nomads in the
Steppe
SCYTHIANS WERE A NOMADIC PEOPLE WHO OCCUPIED VAST TERRITORIES IN WHAT IS NOW SOUTHERN UKRAINE IN THE EIGHTH OR SEVENTH CENTURIES BCE. THE SCYTHIANS HAD LEFT BEHIND AMAZING GOLD ARTIFACTS AND LARGE MOUNDS IN THE UKRAINIAN STEPPE — THOSE BARROWS WERE SCYTHIAN BURIAL SITES. THIS ARTICLE IS BASED ON AN ESSAY BY NATALYA MYKHAILOVA, AN ARCHEOLOGIST.
Some historians believe that similar wagons were used both by the Scythians twenty five hundred years ago and Ukrainian peasants in much later times.
T
here are thousands of mounds in the Ukrainian steppes which are thought to be the burial sites of nomads who used to roam ac ross the territory of the present day Ukraine hundreds of years ago. About three thousand of these kurhany have been probed into by archeo logists and they proved to be the burial sites. But
only a handful of them rendered rich archeologi cal finds, the rest have been robbed in ancient and more recent times. In 1996–1998, one of such kurhans was explored by an expedition of Ukrainian and Polish archeologists. This burial mound, the Velyky Ryzhanivsky Kurhan (burial mound), is located 75 miles south of Kyiv, not far from the village of Ryzhanivka in the Land of Chernihivshchyna. These archeologists had exca vated dozens of such barrows before and made impressive discoveries, and thus they seemed to be prepared to any pleasant or unpleasant surpris es, but what they unearthed in that kurhan dazed even them. The kurgan has revealed one of the very few unlooted tombs of a Scythian chieftain. The archeologists discovered a burial chamber in the depths of the barrow which apparently con tained the remains of a Scythian chieftain. The chamber was divided into two parts by a clay par tition, in one of which there stood a sort of a woo den dais. He was clad in what must have been a sort of a white caftan and red trousers. Around his neck he had a silver ornament with images of lions