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

130 THESARMATIANS
Here also we notice a return to Orientat tradition, to the tradition of
the late Assyrian period, in which the bridles were commonly decorated
with round phalarae of metal. It is in these tombs that we find the
first stirrups.
We do not know much about the costume of the Kuban warriors
and their wives. But the introduction of the fibula points to a great
change, and the appearance of the class of fibula derived from the
La Tene type, and of a Celtic fibula of the Augustan period with
the name of the maker Aucissa, is a proof of regular relations with the
Celtic, and probably with the Germanic world.
Still more important is the complete change in the forms of the
gold ornaments sewn to clothing and shrouds. In the East, at all
periods, clothes had been ornamented with metal plaques sewn on to
the material. We have seen that the mode prevailed in South Russia
in the period of Scythian ascendancy : in that period, the plaques
were nearly always round or square : they were fairly large ; they were
covered with embossed decoration in floral or animal style ; they
were often imitated from Greek coins, and in the fourth and third
centuries, religious scenes were sometimes represented. The Kuban
graves have yielded hundreds of garment plaques, but never of a type
known from the Scythian tombs : they are now very small and thin,
and the shapes are geometric, roundels, billets, fleursdelys, crescents,
voided triangles, rosettes and the like (fig. 17). All these shapes
belong exclusively to the Oriental repertory : exactly similar plaques
have been found in Assyria : the same ornaments appear later in
Sassanian and Arabic art.
The vessels, numerous in the Kuban graves, are sometimes of
metal, sometimes of clay. The metal vases, of silver or bronze, are
almost all importations : the shapes are those current in late Helle-
nistic and Roman Imperial times. Most of the clay vases are also
imported : some are local imitations of classical models. But there
are also native products : the large Asiatic cauldrons of bronze or
copper, which we found in the Scythian tombs, are very common on
the Kuban as well. The general form of these cauldrons remains the
same, but there are alterations of detail which link the Kuban vessels
with those found in the tombs of the period of migrations. Several
of the Kuban vessels bear signs which are undoubtedly alphabetical
this alphabet, as we shall find, was in use at Panticapaeum in the
second and third centuries A. d. The same signs occur on certain
pieces of caparison.
I would also suggest an Oriental origin for the small round bottles
of gold—recalling the spherical vases of the Scythian tombs— ^which
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