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

THE ANIMAL STYLE 187
The new find at Siebenbrunnen in Austria is of a different
nature. Kubitschek, who published it, recognized the close affinity
between the Austrian graves and the tombs, already mentioned,
of the family of Rhescuporis IL Astonished at this affinity, and
convinced that the Siebenbrunnen things were Gothic, he wished
to assign the Kerch finds to a post-Gothic date : this we have
shown to be quite impossible. The affinity is even closer than Kubitschek
supposed. The little gold garment plaques from the Austrian
find are of exactly the same shapes as the Sarmatian plaques from
tombs on the Kuban, at Kerch, on the Don, and on the Dnieper
(see fig. 17). It is not surprising that they occur in the Danube
region as well. The gold bracelets terminate in the same heads as
the tores from Orenburg, from Stavropol, from the regions of the
Kuban and of Kerch. The mirrors are closely connected with
the mirrors of the Kuban. I do not wish to discuss the date of the
Siebenbrunnen find. But whether it dates from the fourth or from
the fifth century, it is nearly allied to the finds of pre-Gothic South
Russia. I do not see why the Siebenbrunnen graves should not have
belonged to a Sarmatian woman and child.
Kubitschek himself noticed the kinship between the Siebenbrunnen
find and a find made at Valmeray in the commune of Moult in Calvados
(Normandy). The tomb was that of a young girl ; it contained,
besides a fibula decorated with inset stones, ' one hundred and sixty
small gold fragments, weighing 37 grammes in all, consisting of
Unear borders forming a succession of triangles, of solid triangles with
little balls at the angles, of rectangles ornamented with three raised
lines of six dots each, of circles with a ball in the centre, and lastly of
double, conjoined triangles, like the solid triangles already mentioned,
but set with small garnets ' (E. de Robillard de Beaurepaire, Bulletin
de la Societe d'Antiquaires de France, viii (1878), p. 155). These
plaques, like the plaques from Siebenbrunnen and from South Russia,
were undoubtedly sewn on to garments. The Norman plaques, then,
offer a striking resemblance to the South Russian finds mentioned
above (see fig. 17).
Others have oeen found at Nordendorf in Germany, according to
Brenner, whose references I have been unable to verify ; and in
North Africa, in a Carthaginian tomb of the Vandal period which
I hope to publish before long. The plaques from Carthage have the
same shapes as the Sarmatian plaques, but their purpose was perhaps
different : they may have formed a necklace.
Half-way between these finds, which go with the Bosphoran, and
the treasure of Petroasa, stands the celebrated find of Szilagy-Somlyo,