Raev B.A. Zoomorphic Jug from the Village Sidory (the Lower Volga Region). To the Problem of Ceramic Import from the Kuban Region
Boris A. Raev, Candidate of Sciences (History), Senior Researcher, Southern Scientific Center, RAS, Prosp. Chekhova, 41, 344006 Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation
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Abstract. In 1959, the Astrakhan expedition excavated barrow 2 of the Koroleva mogila burial mound near the village Sidory of the Volgograd region. The burial had been robbed, but some parts of zoomorphic gray-polished jug were found among the grave goods.
Similar vessels were found in the barrows of the Sarmatian period near the villages Ladozhskaya and Tiflisskaya in the Kuban region. All three vessels reproduce the stylized form of a duck.
The distribution of the finds shows that most of the gray-polished pottery from the Lower Volga region were found in the southernmost territory of the Astrakhan region. According to A. S. Skripkin, the import of gray-clay ceramics to the Lower Volga region was associated with the Meotian and Meoto-Sarmatian workshop-agricultural settlements of the Kuban and Lower Don regions.
Beyond the Middle Kuban, the only and closest parallel to bird-shaped jugs is a vessel from kitchen in Sardis, but it dates to the 6th century BC. Despite the differences in some details and a gap of 700 years, the genetic link of all these vessels appears to be obvious.
There is no doubt that the jugs from Sidory, Tiflisskaya and Ladozhskaya were manufactured in one production center, which was probably located in one of the Meotian settlements of the Kuban region. From here, the jug found in Sidory could be exported by convenient routes along waterways or along the western coast of the Caspian sea. The second option seems to me more probable.
However, we cannot exclude the third possibility. The complexes of Tiflisskaya 18, Ladozhskaya 28 and barrow 2 of the Koroleva mogila burial mound include some rare grave goods such as zoomorphic vessels and silver bowls. Could the nomads who had erected these graves belong to the same wave of migrants, who brought the finds mentioned above with them? There are only a few grounds for categorical statement, but I would not exclude its probability.
Key words: Lower Volga region, Kuban region, Sarmatians, burials, zoomorphic pottery jugs, imports in the Middle Sarmatian culture.
Citation. Raev B.A., 2018. Zoomorphic Jug from the Village Sidory (the Lower Volga Region). To the Problem of Ceramic Import from the Kuban Region. The Lower Volga Archaeological Bulletin, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 82-94. (in Russian). DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/nav.jvolsu.2018.2.7
Zoomorphic Jug from the Village Sidory (the Lower Volga Region). To the Problem of Ceramic Import from the Kuban Region by Raev B.A. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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