“The nomadic people known by the broad term ‘Scythians’ roamed across the Eurasian steppe on horseback, earning a reputation as fierce warriors, from the mouth of the Danube in the west to the Altai mountains in the east from the 9th century BC to the 1st century BC. The signature of this pastoral nomadic culture has been traced across the vast steppe landscape by the structures they left behind in the form of huge burial mounds, known as kurgans, filled with grave goods of gold, including a unique stylistic animal art, weapons, and horse tack.”1,2
The Tagar culture in Siberia
In the previous article [The Scythian Homeland] it was noted how an improved climate in the Tuva region of southern Siberia during the 9th century BC accelerated cultural developments and population increase. Having identified the Scythian homeland as the prime pastureland of the Minusinsk Basin, a hollow some 200km across, in the Sayan Mountains, Southern Siberia, the Tuva region of modern Russia, we now look to identify the people.
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| The Minusinsk Basin |
The areas surrounding the Minusinsk Basin contain some 30,000 kurgans (Scythian burial mounds), accumulated over a thousand year period. Among those are the distinctive burial mounds of the Tagar culture, recognisable by straight walled sides constructed of horizontal kerbstones with large pillars at the corners, enclosing stone cists or chambers. These unusual megalithic constructions form an integral part of the surrounding landscape being found everywhere; on the steppe, along river valleys and on mountain slopes.
The largest the Great Salbyk kurgan (4th Century BC) excavated in 1954-56, was 11m high and constructed with 23 gigantic stones placed at the corners, weighing up to 30-50 tonnes each set vertically at 6m high. These huge megaliths have been sourced to an ancient quarry at Kyzyl-Khaya mountain, 16 km away. The curious appearance of these burial mounds and the vast number of bronze artefacts found in the area have long attracted attention which, sadly, has led to most of these tombs being severely damaged while being looted for their grave goods.
The Minusinsk Basin, an area of elevated steppe in the upper reaches of the Yenisei River, a depression surrounded on three sides by the Altai-Sayan Mountains and to the north by forest, was inhabited during the pre-Scythian, Scythian, and Early Xiongnu-Sarmatian periods, from the 7th - 1st century BC, by tribes named by archaeologists after an island in the Yenisei opposite Minusinsk.
The Soviet scholar Sergey Vladimirovich Kiselev (1905-1962) introduced the term ‘Tagar’ (or ‘Tagarsk’), for the Minusinsk kurgans of the period, after Lake Tagar and the isle of the same name. Kiselev took a significant role in shaping Soviet archaeology, producing an important monograph on the archaeology and history of the peoples of Siberia in the early 1950s.3
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| Tagar sites |
This work was an important milestone in the studies of prehistoric Siberia and addressed the questions of the time regarding the formation and cultural development of the ancient population from the archaeological materials accumulated at that time. Kiselev determined that by the 7th century BC the Scythian cultures of Southern Siberia had been through a formative stage and proposed the following chronology:
• Stage 1: 7th - early 5th centuries BC,
• Stage 2: 5th - 3rd centuries BC,
• Stage 3: 3rd - 1st centuries BC.
During the 1950s and 1960s the Russian scientist and Doctor of Historical Sciences Mikhail Petrovitch Gryaznov (1902–1984) considered the Tagar Culture was genetically related to the earlier local Karasuk Culture of the Bronze Age. Gryaznov developed his own chronology from the 7th century, separating the Tagar Culture into four successive phases:
• 1 - Bainovo, 7th century BC,
• 2 - Podgornovo, 6th-5th centuries BC,
• 3 - Saragash, 4th-3rd centuries BC,
• 4 - Tes', 2nd-1st centuries BC.
The four phases of Gryaznov's chronology of the Scythian Period culture in the middle Yenisei region is still accepted by many archaeologists today.4
The natural environment of the Minusinsk Basin was relatively closed which led to some obvious cultural differences between the Tagar culture and other nomadic tribes in the Central Asian steppe. This period witnessed the emergence of a horse riding elite; the Tagar culture, with their unparalleled metalworking skills, started to dominate life and change the course of history. It is one of the most archaeologically studied groups of the early nomads of Southern Siberia.
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| Tagar weapons |
A substantial amount of bronze artefacts had been collected by the local population from ploughing or pillaging the burial mounds. Outside knowledge of these finds led Peter the Great (1672-1725) to send the first archaeological expedition to Siberia in the early 18th century. The first official excavation of a Tagar burial mound occurred during this expedition near the town of Krasnoturansk on the bank of the Yenisei. Huge amounts of Tagar artefacts were amassed throughout the following century as the archaeological work continued, resulting in vast collections sent back to museums.5
Immense amounts of archaeology were in danger of being lost when work started on the construction of the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric powerstation on the Yenesei river in the Minusinsk Basin in the late 1950s. Consequently, a rescue plan was established, the Krasnoyarsk archaeological expedition, headed by M. P. Gryaznov. As a result a huge amount of archaeology for virtually all periods of the Minusinsk basins was recovered.
The 1990s saw the start of a new stage in the study of the archaeological artefacts of the Minusinsk Basins when many important discoveries were made that frequently altered modern perceptions of the evolution of Bronze Age cultures and provided a new understanding of absolute dates obtained from radiocarbon data.6 This process goes on as new finds and ever advancing technology continuously enlighten scholars perceptions of the cultures of the Minusinsk Basin.
The Skilled Craftsmen of Siberia
The Tagar peoples still practised a mobile pastoralism associated with the movement of animals, with the emphasis more on sheep, to winter pastures, continuing the traditions of the preceding Karasuk culture. However, the large number of bronze sickles found indicate that to the Tagar culture, unlike other nomadic tribes, agriculture, cultivating wild cereals aided by irrigation, played an increasingly important part in the economy.
Unlike other nomadic cultures horses were not buried with the deceased and are not found in Tagar burial mounds, yet items of horse harness are extremely numerous, although almost all of these are admittedly chance finds. The high quality and expert craftsmanship of the horse gear, such as bonze bits, cheek pieces and harness mounts, indicates the great value placed on these objects by the Tagar society. However, horse riding was essential to the Tagar culture, as depicted on many petroglyphs in the area and on practically all the rocks and stones that enclose the Tagar burial mounds.7
The Tagar culture witnessed a gradual development over a long period without dramatic lifestyle change. However, rich deposits of ore led to the Minusinsk Basin becoming an important centre of ancient metalworking, evolving complex techniques of casting to produce intricate works of art. Over this long period they developed advanced methods of metal casting using the lost-wax casting process to manufacture bronze weapons, tools and cauldrons and horse gear as already mentioned.
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| Bridle piece with rams, cast bronze, Minusinsk Basin (Tagar culture, 5th century BC) |
Ornamental zoomorphic art was very prominent in the Tagar culture with extremely decorative plaques in engravings, cast bas-relief figures and in three-dimensional hollow sculptures, with representation of animals from their worlds, both real and mythical. Mountain goats and birds of prey were ubiquitous but representations of boars, bears, feline beasts of prey, griffins, wolves and tigers were also popular in Tagar art. Complex ‘Animal Style’ ornaments modelled in the round, usually standing and cast in metal, were used to decorate the hilts of daggers, battle-axes, daggers, tools and details of horse harnesses. All of them are executed to a high technological standard.8
Yet perhaps surprisingly animals important to their culture such as horses, deer, fish and antelope are absent from the earliest artefacts. Ornamental art featuring the deer was a particular favourite among Scythian cultures and achieved wide spread popularity with steppe cultures and was adapted locally across the Yenisei River region. Bronze plaques showing deer with their legs tucked up and their antlers flowing down the back first appeared in the Tagar art of the 5th century BC.9
Funerary Rites
The Tagar burials are notable from the pyramidal mound enclosed by horizontal kerb stones with vertically standing stone slabs set prominently at the corner points. This tradition seems to have followed on from the Karasuk culture that preceded it. Many of the symbolic images found on objects and petroglyphs on stone slabs of tombs have been interpreted as likely evidence of shamanistic rituals, a widespread religious system of the Scythian period from the Yenisei region.10
Weapons, including quivers of arrows, were common in male graves, while knives, mirrors and ornaments were found in female graves. Pottery vessels of drink and supplied with select cuts of mutton and beef have been found in burials of both sexes, no doubt to provide sustenance in the next world.
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| Great Salbyk kurgan |
Over a period of time Tagar burial tradition increased in size and depth, with stone cists gradually replaced by timber frames with multi-layered floors. As the size of the burial mounds increased the number of bodies buried in each also increased. In the early period typically there was just one body per grave but from the 5th century small family graves began to emerge, and even collective tombs with a hundred or more burials appeared. The deceased were buried in a supine position with their heads oriented to the south-west, on odd occasion to the north-east. In the case of the collective graves, the orientation varied.11
Found in the same cemeteries alongside small and medium size mounds, the increasing size and complexity of burial mounds, such the Great Salbyk kurgan (described above), the largest at 11m high and 500m in circumference, implies social changes and bear witness to the emergence of a hierarchical society based on property ownership and social status.
The Metal Road
The metal working skills of the Tagar culture were obviously of great interest and very desirable to other tribes which allowed the Tagar to exert a strong influence on and establish trade networks with neighbouring regions, which during its height, spread to the north-west of the Minusinsk valley, along the outlying ridges of the Altai mountains as far as Krasnoyarsk, on the bank of the Yenisei River, today the second-largest city in Siberia.12
At the end of the first millennium BC the Tagar culture disappeared, as did many other Scythian-type archaeological cultures around that time, subsumed or merged with others, as events further east started a wave of movement in a westwards direction.
The Tagar period was followed by a period of Hunnic influence associated with the Xiongnu, which was followed by the emergence of the Late Iron Age "Tesinsky culture" in the Minusinsk Basin, from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD. The Tesinky was followed by the Tashtyk culture, from the 1st - 4th century AD, designated by scholars as one of the post-Scythian Iron Age cultures of the Yenisei valley in southern Siberia.
However, the more perplexing matter is not where the Tagar culture went but where did it come from: Did it evolve out of the Karasuk culture as conventional wisdom states, or did some other process effect the changes of the 5th - 7th centuries BC?
Notes & References
1. A series of articles exploring the claim that the prototype of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, in addition to the quest for the Holy Grail, evolved in the Iranian-speaking people of the Eurasian steppe known as Sarmatians. See: C. Scott Littleton & Ann C. Thomas, The Sarmatian Connection: New Light on the Origin of the Arthurian and Holy Grail Legends, The Journal of American Folklore , Jan. - Mar., 1978, Vol. 91, No. 359 (Jan. - Mar., 1978), pp. 513-527.
2. More recently it is claimed that the descendants of the Alans [“an ancient and medieval Iranic nomadic pastoral people of the North Caucasus, related to the Sarmatians”] had a tendency "for telling stories about cups, the importance of cups in the Alanic religion, and the extent of Alanic influence in the church of Gaul" suggests that the French poet Robert de Boron may have had an Alanic source for his Grail material, with the Grail Hallows being the treasure taken from the Temple of Solomon by the Romans in 70 AD. See: C. Scott Littleton & Linda A. Malcor, From Scythia to Camelot, Garland, (Revised Edition) 2000, The Alans and the Grail, p.233.
3. S.V. Kiselev, The Ancient History of Southern Siberia, Moscow Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1951.
4. Nomads Of The Eurasian Steppes In The Early Iron Age, Edited By Jeannine Davis-Kimball, Vladimir A. Bashilov, Leonid T. Yablonsky, Zlnat Press, Berkeley, CA, 1995, p.257.
5. Frozen tombs : the culture and art of the ancient tribes of Siberia, British Museum,1978, p.79.
6. A.V. Poliakov, I.P. Lazaretov, Current state of the chronology for the palaeometal period of the Minusinsk basins in southern Siberia, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Volume 29, February 2020.
7. K.V. Chugunov, Early nomads of Central Asia and southern Siberia, in Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia, p.75.
8. M.P. Zavitukhina, Ancient Art of the Yenisei Area; The Scythian Time, Iskusstvo (Leningrad), 1983, p.35; quoted in Nomads Of The Eurasian Steppes In The Early Iron Age, Edited By Jeannine Davis-Kimball, et al.
9. Frozen Tombs, p.80.
10. Bokovenko, The Emergence of the Tagar Culture.
11. Bokovenko, Ibid.
12. K. V. Chuguno, Early nomads of Central Asia and southern Siberia, in Scythians: Warriors of Ancient Siberia, p.75.
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