Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

128 THESARMATIANS
also obtain a rich and varied polychromy by using precious stones and
pieces of coloured glass (see fig. i6, 4 and 5—the two gold fibulae from
and the
Zubov's farm, with Alexandrian coloured glass in the centre ;
enamelled earring, which is very popular at Kerch in the later period).
The first group, then, may be dated in the first century before and the
first after Christ.
The second and largest group can be dated by a series of objects
which belong to the end of the first and to the second century of our
era : a profusion of blown-glass vessels, with the typical shapes of
the period ; engraved gems ; clay vases in the form of animals and
of human heads ; Roman fibulae ; fragments of terra sigillata ; and the
like. It is in these Kuban tumuli that the fibula appears for the first
time in South Russia. Fibulae are rare in the tombs of the first
period and become common only in the second. Again, in the tombs
of the first period, nearly all the fibulae belong to one or other of two
types : one type, usually in gold, is derived from the well-known
fibula of the La Tene period, and has all the characteristics of the
tendril fibula, the ' fibula with foot turned over ' of the Germans, the
forerunner of the so-called Gothic fibula ; the other is in the form of
a brooch or of an animal, sometimes a grasshopper ; the material is
again gold, richly embellished with precious stones. The second
period offers fibulae of the various types which are current in the
Roman empire, but also develops the tendril fibula, which comes
nearer and nearer to the so-called Gothic type.
The third and last group of graves may be dated in the third and
fourth centuries a. d. : they present remarkable analogies with the
Kerch graves of the same period, which we shall describe in the next
chapter.
One more observation : in certain tombs which belong to the
first division of the group, notably in a grave at Zubov's farm, and in
another at the village of Ust-Labinskaya, objects were discovered
which are much earlier than the grave as a whole : a Greek phiale in
the former grave, with the inscription AttoXXows "Hye/idvos el^il rofj. acri,
and a bronze candelabrum in the latter, unquestionably belong to the
sixth century B.C. I have no doubt that the objects were looted,
in the course of a tribal raid beyond the Caucasus, by the warriors
who were buried in these graves : the phiale must have been a sacred
vessel belonging to the temple of Apollo at Phasis. Consequently
the objects have no bearing on the date of the tombs : but they
furnish valuable evidence as to the character of the builders.
Although they extend over a period of more than four centuries,
the tombs of the Kuban valley form a coherent group. The con-