A Diadem from the Khokhlach Burial-mound.   Reflections on the center of manufacture
Authors: Трейстер М. Ю. . 
Published: October 2023

In the focus of the article is a diadem from a Sarmatian burial in the Khokhlach Burialmound in Novocherkassk on the Lower Don, most likely dating from the late 1st – early 2nd century AD. The unique construction and decoration of the diadem is a combination of typical Hellenistic elements with elements characteristic of Sarmatian art.The author examines the constructive features of the diadem, gold cells with inlays, decorating it, the design of the edges of the plates with pearls strung on a wire, amphora-shaped pendants, suspended from the diadem. Particular attention is paid to the central element of the diadem – a secondary-used bust of the goddess, a late Hellenistic amethyst cameo in the original gold setting, and with some additions made during the creation of the diadem. Also, most likely, to the 2nd–1st centuries BC dates back the figurine of Eros playing the flute, used in the decoration of the diadem, adapted from a pendant of an earring. Round figures of birds with filigree settings on the wings, placed along the upper edge of the diadem, are compared with figures of birds on the handles of silver vessels and vessel lids from the Sarmatian complexes in the Crimea and the Lower Volga region. Two other bird figures, placed in the central parts of the side plates of the diadem, with their bodies and heads shown en face in high relief, with inlays of coral and turquoise, are made in a different style and are compared with finds from Iran. In general, the Khokhlach diadem can be described as a product of the 1st century AD, most likely its second half, designed for the tastes of a nomadic client, made with the secondary use, including alterations and additions, of “antiquarian” elements of Late Hellenistic decorations (cameo, figurine of Eros, gold settings with inlays). I.P. Zasetskaya, noting the mixture of artistic styles in the decorative design of the diadem, does not give an unambiguous answer to the question, of where the diadem could had been made, not excluding the possibility of its manufacture, neither in the Bosporus, nor “in one of the centers of Asia Minor, ... in Syria, or even farther east, for example, in Parthia”. It is difficult for the author to imagine the possibility of such a contact when ordering a diadem in Syria or Asia Minor. As for Parthia as a possible center for diadem-manufacture, it is more likely than Syria or Asia Minor, however, there is no evidence that dissimilar stylistic elements or elements of antiquarian jewelry were used in Parthian minor arts. On the contrary, just these features characterize jewelry and works of toreutics from the North Pontic area and from the Bosporus, in particular, where already in the second half of the 2nd century BC the practice of using elements of other items in the repair of jewelry was used. Inlays of intaglios made by a Bosporan stone-cutting workshop in a phalera from the cache in the Burialmound near the village of Dachi, chronologically and geographically close to the Khokhlach barrow, indirectly confirm the possibility of making of the Khoklach diadem in the Bosporan workshop. There are also presented the data on the possibility of manufacturing in the Bosporus in the 1st century AD also of the other works of toreutics from the burials of the Sarmatian elite of the Don region.