The World of the Scythians

"Renate Rolle is an archeologist. This book was originally in German and translated years later. In many ways, it was my introduction to the Scythians. She did a lot of archeological research on Scythian sites, and her research into burials and the bodies in them just blew my mind. It’s only touched on in this book, but in her other research, she did a lot of work identifying women in burials. They had often been assumed to be men because they had weapons next to them, and injuries you associate with prolonged experience of combat. If these had been male bodies, we’d have had no problem categorizing them as warriors or warrior-esque burials—but some of the bodies are women. That really opened up a conversation about the role of women in Scythian society and questions about the Amazon myth and whether or not the Scythians were perhaps the origin of that myth. Rolle was my introduction to all this, so I absolutely love this book. Her emphasis on archeology over the written evidence just holds so much value. It’s an explanation of Scythian society as we understand it—and much of what she was saying in 1989 is still how we understand the Scythians. It’s just a fantastic book. It’s a lovely introduction to all the different evidence and what Scythian society might have been like. It’s interesting because the Scythians were not a united group. They may not even have associated with each other. ‘Scythians’ is the title that’s given to them by both Greek and Roman writers, and Assyrian and Persian writers give us similar names. But it’s an archeological culture as much as anything else. When we identify three particular types of artifacts in a single site, it’s called ‘the golden triad’ of Scythian culture. One is weaponry—a particular type of bow and a particular type of arrowhead or ax. There’s also a very specific type of horse bridle. Then, there’s a very particular type of art style known as animalistic art that’s very characteristic of Scythians. If you Google ‘Scythian art,’ you’ll see a very distinct style of fantastical animals. If we see these three in the same area, we go, ‘Okay, this is Scythian.’ If you think about it, it’s quite a vague way of defining a culture, so we’ve got to keep that in mind. The Scythians are presented as a very nomadic group. You could think of them as tribal groups, linked by language, maybe, and base cultures. Some of them may be moving around, but we’re not thinking Mongolian hordes sweeping through Europe or anything like that. Interestingly, there is evidence (which I go into in my book ) that some of them seem to have been static. These were nomads who didn’t move. It’s quite contradictory. Our written evidence and our archeological evidence start to disagree with each other. It’s gorgeous. Historians don’t talk about this, but archeology shows us all the time that the Greeks and Romans really prized the metallurgy and especially the goldwork from the northern cultures. So not just Scythian, but also what you and I might think of as Celtic or Gallic. They’re good at what they do, and they are superior to the Romans and Greeks at it. It’s just beautiful. Even today, you look at it and go, ‘I could wear that.’"