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

THE ANIMAL STYLE 189
conclude my study of the polychrome style, I should like to draw attention
to a matter which has hitherto, I fancy, escaped notice. We have
followed the development of the round or oval brooch in Sarmatian
art (figs. 1 6 and 19)
to be the combination of the simplest geometric motives—circle,
spectacle-shaped spiral, double spiral in the form of an eight^—carried
out in granulation or in filigree, with a rich polychromy effected by the
use of precious stones, transparent or coloured glass, and enamels.
Embossing is sometimes employed for the ornaments instead of granu-
: the characteristic feature of the decoration appeared
lation. Very few specimens of these brooches have been found in
the Roman provinces, and such as have been found are comparatively
late. The British Museum, for example, has only two (Marshall,
Nos. 2863 and 2864, pi. LXV) :
they came from Antarados in Syria,
and belong to the third or fourth century A. D. We have seen that
these brooches are common on the Kuban, where the earliest go back
to the second or first century B.C., the date of the finds at Artyiikhov's
farm, at Akhtanizovka, at Siverskaya, at Zubov's farm. Now just
at the period of the migrations these brooches become common in
Western Europe : we find them in Italy, in France, on the Rhine,
and in Anglo-Saxon England. In England they are confined to
Kent, where they exhibit an interesting and original development,
and are characteristic of the rich civilization which flourished there
from the fourth to the sixth century. Compare the South Russian
brooches which I have reproduced with the selection given by
Baldwin Brown {The Arts in Early England, iv, pis. CXLV-CXLVII) :
particularly the Prankish fibula in the museum at Rouen (pi. CXLVII,
2) ; the fibula from Kent, formerly in the Mayer Collection and now
in the Liverpool Museum (pi. CXLVII, i) ; or the Maidstone and
Dover fibulae (pi. CXLVI, 1-2) : ornament and technique are the
same as in South Russia. Another testimony to the persistence of the
types created or adopted by the Sarmatians, and to the wide diffusion
of these types at the period of the migration of the Sarmatian tribes.
The conclusion which follows from these facts and these comparisons
is one which must be taken into account in all future investigation.
The polychrome style which spread over Central Europe at
the period of the migrations is totally different from the polychrome
style which was current in the Roman provinces and in Italy during
the first and second centuries A.D. The provincial and Italian style
has nothing to do with South Russia : it is the outcome of the Syrian
polychrome style on the one hand, and of the ancient Celtic polychrome
style on the other. The Syrian style aims at providing a
handsome gold setting for one or more precious stones, the Celtic at