ИСТИНА

During five seasons (2015-2019) the Stavropol expedition of the Department of Archaeology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University excavated nine barrows of the Scythian elite kurgan group named Novozavedennoye-III (in the Stavropol region) dated by the end of the 5th – the 4th century B.C. Among the findings there are zoomorphic artifacts that are realized in the canons of the so-called Scythian animal style, i.e. the protomes of horses shaping bronze harness, the head of predator (wolf) on the horn pin and full-figured images of an “elk-goat” on gold dress plaques. The “elk-goat” is a synthetic motif of the Scythian animal style previously identified by the author in the article of 1995 and till nowadays numbered on the territory of the Scythian archaeological culture by 21 original images and circa 120 while counting copies, - mostly decorating gold costume plaques located primarily in Kuban region, also on the Lower Dnieper, in Eastern Crimea and in Stavropol region). While the images of horses and “elk-goat” belong to the Scythian-Maeotian school of animal style and their genesis is undoubtedly connected with the Kuban region, the head of the wolf is eventually originated from the “Sauromatian school” (Southern Ural – Low Volga) of the Scythian-Siberian animal style. The quality of these pieces is rather high and all the materials dominating in the art of Scythian animal style (i.e. bronze, gold and bone) are used here. It is noteworthy that these images of Novozavedennoye-III are found in elite graves as far as the embankments of these mounds were erected over considerable burial pits and also reed ritual platforms and roll-shaped ejections of loess ground (produced while digging the grave) around the graves, holding the wood-reed constructions overlaying the graves. On the bottom of the burial pits on organic mats there had been reposed representatives of Scythian aristocracy, accompanied with armament (swords, arrows, armor), horses, vessels with a funeral food, bronze buckets or braziers, decorations, stone graters etc. Judging by some finds this population was in interaction with the population of the territories of the Kuban region, the Transcaucasia, the Northern Black sea littoral, the Lower Volga and the Southern Urals. In this situation the items shaped in Scythian animal style and belonging to costume and harness obviously mark rather high social position of deceased buried in Novozavedennoye-III kurgan group. For instance, one of the gold dress plaques with “elk-goat” and the horn pin with the head of wolf were found in the same funeral complex of an aristocratic lady with Greek ariball-lekythos and some Transcaucasian trappings.