Trufanov A.A. Two-Piece Bow-Shaped Brooches with Returned Foot from Barbarian Cemeteries of the Crimea
Alexander A. Trufanov, Candidate of Sciences (History), Senior Researcher, Institute of Crimean Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Prosp. Akademika Vernadskogo, 2, 295007 Simferopol, Russian Federation
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Abstract. In the first half of the 3rd century AD, bow-shaped brooches with a returned foot of a specific design were common in the southwestern region of the Crimean Peninsula. They differ from the more widespread one-piece brooches and the two-piece brooches that replaced them. A total of 59 such brooches have been recorded, 51 of which come from barbarian burials of this period. These brooches are made of two pieces of wire, and for this reason, they are called two-piece brooches. They consist of a bow-shaped body and a separately made spring with a lower chord and pin that are attached to the head of the bow; an axle is inserted into the spring. Several hypotheses have been put forward regarding the reasons for the appearance of items of such a design. According to one of these hypotheses, they are a special type of bow-shaped brooch, while another suggests that they are ordinary one-piece brooches that acquired their unusual construction feature as a result of breakage and subsequent repair. A summary of the accumulated data allows us to return to the discussion of this issue and assess the validity of the hypotheses put forward. Both versions are considered in the context of new finds that could serve to support or refute them. According to the author, the Crimean two-piece brooches of the first half of the 3rd century AD, which have features of both one-piece and two-piece brooches, having appeared as a way to repair broken items, could have been a link in the evolution of bow-shaped brooches with a returned foot that led to the appearance in the region of two-piece fibulae around the middle of the 3rd century AD.
Key words: Crimea, barbarian cemeteries, burials, bow-shaped brooches, typology, chronology.
Citation. Trufanov A.A., 2026. Dvusostavnye luchkovye podvyaznye fibuly iz mogil’nikov varvarskogo naseleniya Kryma [Two-Piece Bow-Shaped Brooches with Returned Foot from Barbarian Cemeteries of the Crimea]. Nizhnevolzhskiy Arkheologicheskiy Vestnik [The Lower Volga Archaeological Bulletin], vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 115-138. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/nav.jvolsu.2026.2.5
Two-Piece Bow-Shaped Brooches with Returned Foot from Barbarian Cemeteries of the Crimea by Trufanov A.A. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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