ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOURCES OF THE CRIMEAN NATIVES’ RELIGION AND CULTS IN THE EARLY IRON AGE
Authors: Kravchenko E. A. 
Published: November 2023

in the Early Iron Age

Scientific information about the natives of Crimea, in spite of more than a century of investigations, is quite limited. Perhaps the least clear in the archaeological and cultural-historical constructions of the Crimean societies of the final Bronze Age — Early Iron Age is still the sphere of religion and cults.

The only thing that in any way indicates the religion of the population of Crimea — is a set of symbols on ceramics, which demonstrates the dynamics of change of signs. In addition to images of signs in the culture, images of faces are also known — on a vessel from Uch-Bash and on phallic-shaped ceramic figures from the pre-Greek layer of Chersonesos.

We assume that the social order of the tribes of the younger pre-Taurian period was destroyed due to the invasion of nomads. The old economic system in the northern Black Sea coast ceased to function, contacts collapsed, and the remnants of the local tribes formed a new society, in fact, on fire and together with the remnants of other tribes. In such a situation, the beginnings of a new ideology were probably destroyed along with their bearers. The tribes adopted a primitive ideology that was not characteristic of earlier Crimean societies. Why this happened and where this ideology was borrowed from, or whether it was characteristic of the tribal Bronze Age tribes living on the peninsula, remains unclear.

In general, characterizing the tribes that inhabited the Crimea during the metal ages, only in the final of Bronze Age and turn to Iron Age and later during the emergence of Greek centres we can talk about the tribes of farmers, where the cultivation of cereals accounts for a significant share in the economy. This is important because only the agricultural tribes have a common lunar calendar, which was determined by observations of celestial bodies, and therefore needed a sanctuary-observatory. There are no signs of such sanctuaries in the Crimea. The tribes of pastoralists had simpler ways of observing the sky, which probably occurred on the basis of the movement of the sun through the firmament, embodied in temples and sacred places on certain elevations — mountains, stone remains etc., or the construction of special structures — pyramids, ziggurats, mounds, obelisks, menhirs. We observe the simplest forms of worship in the Crimea — cemeteries under mountain ranges, mounds, menhirs. Sanctuaries and cults of the pre-Taurian periods of the Kyzyl-Koba culture are not known to us, except for a small set of signs on ceramic vessels. This antropomorthous signs have earlier analogies in Eastern Mediteranian and show features of changing in ideology of native population in different lends in process of transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age. This features appearances in anthropomorthous signs. All the known sanctuaries of the Crimean Mountains dated from the Roman time and they did not connect with Kyzyl-Koba culture. The burial custom of the tribes of the Taurian period is rows of stone cists, located under the ridges of the mountains; in some graves were installed menhirs. This custom is more in line with the population with the main component of livestock in the economy. The sanctuaries of the Crimean Mountains appear in the already formed form with an established custom and have nothing similar in the rites of Kyzyl-Koba tribes.

More and more evidence is now being gathered in favour of the emergence of a completely new phenomenon for Crimea — military cults, which may be associated with a new wave of people who found themselves in the Crimea in connection with the spread of Latin cultures to the east. Preconditions, in particular, the transition of the Tauri population to the customs of the Scythian tribes, developed on the peninsula in the late 4th — early 3rd century BC. Thus, nothing contradicts the formation of syncretic military cults in the barbarian population of Crimea in the 2nd century BC and the emergence of such phenomena as the sanctuary of Gurzufske Sidlo in Roman times.