The Alans on the Dniepr During the Great Migration Period

According to Marcianus (or pseudo-Marcianus), the Greek geographer of Heraclea Pontus (around 400 C.E.), "the Rudon River has its source in the Alan mountain; near this mountain and in this country in general live the Alans-Sarmatians. The riverhead of the Borisphen, which flows to the Pontus, is located on their lands. The Borisphen lands behind the Alans are inhabited by the so-called European Huns" (Marcianus, II, 39, quoted from Latyshev 1890). It is generally known that Borisphen in the ancient sources refers to the Dniepr, whereas the Rudon is one of the rivers of the Baltic basin (Neman or Zapadnaia Dvina, see Kazanskii 1992a, p. 82). These two geographical references allowed D.A. Machinskii to locate Marcianus's Alans-Sarmatians on the Dniepr, somewhere between the southern border of the forest zone and the Huns' territory, which encompassed the lower Dniepr steppes around 400 C.E. (Machinskii 1976, fig. 4). In this work, we will try to identify archeological monuments of the Alans-Sarmatians, mentioned by Marcianus. By Alans-Sarmatians we mean all Iranian-(but not only) speaking tribes of the steppe and adjacent regions, the descendants of the Sarmatians and the Alans. We should abstain from more precise ethnic linkages, especially during the period of the Great Migration, when new ethnopolitical units emerged of barbarians for whom an orientation toward a particular chieftain (dynasty) was often more significant than an individual's actual ethnicity (see Wolfram 1998 for more details).a At present, three remains are known on the Dneipr's left bank, undoubtedly related to the Alans-Sarmatians: the kurgan burials Kantemirovka in the Vorskla basin, Novo-Podkryazh on the Orel', and Dmukhailovka (Fig. 1, 8, 9, 42). Here we are counting only the closed complexes, which have been reliably dated. The small Kantemirovka burial is situated near the settlement and the necropolis of the Cherniakhovo culture, but nothing indicates that they were built at the same time. Three kurgans were excavated by M. Rudinskii in 1925 (Rudinskii 1931)

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Cartography · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Geographer · Geography · Steppe · Ancient and Medieval Archaeology Studies · Anthropology · Byzantine Studies and History · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History

• Migration Concepts in Central Eurasian Archaeology

  Michael Frachetti, Michael D Frachetti•Annual Review of Anthropology•2011

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• Contribution à l'étude des témoignages archéologiques des Goths en Europe orientale à l'époque des Grandes Migrations

  Open Access•Michel Kazanski, René Legoux•Archéologie médiévale•1988

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• Les Goths et les Huns. À propos des relations entre les Barbares sédentaires et les nomades

  Open Access•Michel Kazanski•Archéologie médiévale•1992

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