SCYTHIAN AMAZONS: LEVEL OF STUDY
Authors: Fialko E. E. 
Published: March 2020

Scythian Amazons have attracted the attention of researchers since a long time. The Amazons as the subject is developed in three main directions, conditioned by the choice of a certain group of sources — literary, pictorial and archaeological.

The literary and visual aspects have been developed quite thoroughly by many generations of researchers, as evidenced by the representative corpus of monographs and publications. Both these directions developed in parallel, often intersecting.

Literary aspect implies the study of the image of the Amazon — one of the brightest in classical ancient mythology and culture. Several topics could be seen as key here: the degree of an existence historicism of these warlike women ; the meaning of the term «Amazon»; the origin of the cycle of myths about the Amazons; plot cycles; confrontation / opposition to heroes; and finally, the Amazons and gender issues.

The pictorial aspect is related to the study of a wide range of works of decorative art, in which female warriors appear. Following subjects are developed here: storylines (Amazonomachy as Pan-Hellenic plot, Grifonomachy as the local variant thereof ; an injured Amazon, etc.); the image of an Amazon in art in general (multi-figure compositions, solitary figures) or in its particular forms — architecture, sculpture, plastic, painting, toreutics, vases art, etc.); interpretation of compositions, iconography, detailed analysis of accessories and so on.

Archaeological aspect looks the least developed, since it is connected with the necessary field work. In the process of studying the funerary complexes of Scythian female warriors, three stages can be distinguished. At the first stage (second half of the 19th century — the end of the 1950s), during the occasional excavations of the Kurgan antiquities of the Pripontian steppes, single graves of women with weapons were discovered. They seemed to have already been noticed, but as an exceptional phenomenon. The second stage (the second half of the 20th century) is characterized by a change in the vector of archaeological researches — at this time, not only the large Kurgans begin to be explored, but also the burial grounds of the rank soldiers. Excavation materials are introduced into scientific circulation. The first analytical works appear (O. Ganina, V. Olkhovskiy, V. Ilinskaya and A. Terenozhkin, E. Buniatian, E. Fialko, R. Rolle, V. Guliaev). It should be noted that these publications are used to this day by foreign colleagues. The third stage (the end of the 20th century — the beginning of the 21st century) was marked by a forced turn from fieldwork, especially barrows, to the office investigations. At this time there were publications of a series of graves of Amazons in individual burial grounds, in different regions of European Scythia (steppe and forest-steppe Dnieper, Crimea, Transdnistria and the Don region). Their number reached 250. These works treated different types of the burial structures, certain categories of burial items of Scythian Amazons, their social stratification, complexes chronology, etc. These materials bring us closer to interesting conclusions and generalizations.