Crimea is one of the most fascinating regions for archaeologists. Its position between the Eurasian Steppe and the Black Sea area connected and melted various cultural elements of different origins. Here, sedentary societies entered in violent or peaceful relations with nomads since the age of Greek colonization to the Late Middle Ages. Linked to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, this peninsula was both an extension of the steppe and the northernmost outpost of the Mediterranean urban civilization. One of the consequences of this interaction between the two worlds during Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages was the production of various metalwork objects for barbarian clients in Crimean workshops. In this place of crossroads, fashion became a mixture of Byzantine and barbarian styles, expressed in bronze, silver or gold objects like belt buckles, fibulae, jewellery or harness pieces. The cities of Cherson and Bosporos produced, for example, types of buckles or fibulae worn by barbarians from the fifth to the seventh centuries.[1] It has also been shown that a type of cheek-piece used by the Huns was produced in the Bosporan workshops.[2]
This book provides new and important evidence in this respect, because it presents a significant and diverse number of pieces discovered in Crimea, gathered in the last decades of the nineteenth century by a Russian collector, the military engineer Alexander Berthier-Delagarde, and preserved in the British Museum since 1923. It is smaller than the similar collection assembled from Crimean acquisitions between 1905 and 1915 by Johannes von Diergardt [3], but it does contribute to a better knowledge of the metalwork produced between the fourth and seventh centuries in these workshops. The editor Júlia Andrási has already published a preliminary study on this collection.[4]
The first chapter, written by the foremost Crimean archaeologist Aleksander Aibabin, presents the geographical background (so important for this land), and a short history of Crimea, between the seventh century BC and the thirteenth century AD, that focuses on ethnic changes (1-7). The same chapter includes some brief data on the gathering of the collection, a summary of previous research about the early medieval Crimean workshops, and some data on the chronology of the cemeteries that provided material similar to that gathered in this collection (8-9).
The British Museum purchased only less than half of the collection offered in 1923, other objects (mostly Greek and Early Roman) being sold elsewhere. Photos made by Berthier-Delagarde during the excavations were discovered in the Ukranian archives, but the original catalogue was not retrieved during the documentation work carried out by Andrási. The second chapter (11-31) tries to reconstitute the contents of the entire collection through comparison with the extant old photos.
The catalogue is divided into three parts. The largest and most important for archaeological research includes artefacts from the fourth to the seventh century AD (33-114). Appendix 1 publishes Early Roman jewellery (115-131), while Appendix 2 is dedicated to some miscellaneous Greek Age and Late Medieval objects (132-140). Every object is illustrated in plates at the end of each section. The description of the objects (earrings, pendants, brooches, armrings, buckles, harness pieces) is very detailed, and in many cases analogies with bibliography are provided. Of special interest are the plates that display the deconstruction into parts of some types of brooches, buckles, belt strap ends and harness fittings (Plates 9, 15-18, 27, 33, 35, 47, 48). Such technological aspects are seldom addressed in the archaeological literature. In this case it was easy to present such material, because the objects are completely preserved.
The book continues with another study by A. Aibabin providing a commentary on the most important pieces in the collection, in chronological order (141-149). The first group of objects is of Sarmatian and Alan origin. Aibabin emphasizes that the harness fittings from the collection provide evidence for the existence of an early polychrome style used by the Alans since the second half of the third century AD. This polychrome style was specific especially for the Hunnic period, well represented in the Berthier-Delagarde collection. For the sixth and seventh centuries, the collection includes interesting buckles and radiate-headed and eagle-headed brooches, whose chronology is discussed by Aibabin. He concludes that the various pieces preserved in this collection, some of them imported from the Ostrogothic and Gepidic lands, illustrate not only the evolution of crafts in this region, but also contacts between craftsmen from Crimea and Central Europe.
The last chapter, written by Susan La Niece and Michael Cowell (151-160), is a metallographic and technological study of the objects. They determined the composition of the gold, silver and copper alloys, and analysed the techniques used for composite golden or silver jewels with inlay (gems or glass).
In conclusion, the careful work carried on by J. Andrási with the help of her colleagues provides a new and useful research instrument for archaeologists specializing in the Early Middle Ages, not only for the Black Sea area, but also for other European regions.
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Notes:
1. See for instance A. Aibabin, "La fabrication des garnitures de ceintures et des fibules à Chersonèse, au Bosphore Cimmérien et dans la Gothie de Crimée aux VIe-VIIIe siècles," in Outils et ateliers d'orfèvres des temps anciens (Colloque, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Musée des antiquités nationales, 17-19 janvier 1991), Antiquités Nationales, memoire 2, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 1993, pp. 163-170.
2. I. R. Akhmedov, "New data about the origin of some constructive parts of the horse-harness of the Great Migration Period," in E. Istvánovits (ed.), International Connections of the Barbarians of the Carpathian Basin in the 1st-5th Centuries AD. Proceedings of the International Conference held in 1999 in AszÓd and Nyiregyháza, Nyiregyháza, 2001, pp. 363-388.
3. J. Werner, Katalog der Sammlung Diergardt (völkerwanderungszeitliches Schmuck), vol. I, Berlin, 1961; I. Damm Gürçay, Goldschmiedearbeiten der Völkerwanderungszeit aus dem nördlichen Schwarzmeergebiet (Katalog der Sammlung Diergardt, vol. II), Kölner Jahrbuch für Vor- und Frühgeschichte, 21, 1988, pp. 65-210.
4. J. Andrási, "The Berthier-Delagarde Collection of Crimean Jewellery: Difficulties with the Documentation of an Old Collection," in M. Kazanski, V. Soupault, eds., Les sites archéologiques en Crimée et au Caucase durant l'antiquité tardive et le haut Moyen-Âge, (Colloquia Pontica, 5), Leiden, 2000, pp. 97-108.