The Ancients - Ancient Kazakhstan: Gold of the Great Steppe

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

Gold and horses! 2,500 years ago, in the area of the Great Steppe that is now Eastern Kazakhstan, an extraordinary ancient Scythian culture reigned supreme. They were called the Saka, renowned for their skill as horse archers and for their elaborate elite burials. Ancient Persian and Greek sources labelled them a barbaric, nomadic people – a scourge on the ‘civilised’ world. But new archaeological discoveries from East Kazakhstan are revealing a very different picture. A picture that highlights how the Saka were a highly-sophisticated ancient society. A culture that boasted complex settlements, expert craftsmen, extensive trade routes and more, alongside their equine mastery and their staggering wealth. Now, for a limited time only, you can see some of these newly-discovered artefacts at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. The exhibition is called ‘Gold of the Great Steppe’. Running from 28th September 2021 to 30th January 2022, it is the first exhibition about this ancient culture ever to be shown in the UK. To find out more about the exhibition and what these newly-discovered artefacts are revealing about the Saka, Tristan headed up to Cambridge to interview Dr Rebecca Roberts, associated curator of ‘Gold of the Great Steppe’.Gold of the Great Steppe Exhibition: https://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/visit-us/exhibitions/gold-of-the-great-steppe

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in eastern Kazakhstan that belonged to an ancient culture that lived in this area of the world some 2,500 years ago. They were called the Sarka or the Saka, the eastern Scythians. To find out more about the exhibition and how the artefacts on display are shining more light or revealing new information about these ancient people, I was delighted to last week get the opportunity to head up to Cambridge to go to the Fitzwilliam Museum and to interview one of the curators, Dr. Rebecca Roberts. This was a brilliant chat. It was wonderful to learn so much more about this ancient culture. And without further ado, here's Rebecca to talk all about gold of the great step.

Rebecca, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Oh, thank you for having me on. Not at all. Thank you for inviting me to this exhibition today in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. I mean, the first thing I noticed is just looking around, there's gold everywhere, Rebecca. There is gold everywhere. And we really wanted to get a sense of that wonder and discovery and the real sort of crescendo of gold objects visually, you know, to have that wonderful impact because they are just absolutely amazing. But on the other hand, of course, we hope that people will spend time here and also find the stories behind the gold because the gold is very beautiful and engaging. But it's really the stories it tells that are much more exciting.

Absolutely. We'll get into those stories very, very quickly indeed. But let's set the scene for this whole exhibition. And first of all, whereabouts in the ancient world are we talking with these objects? Yeah, so geographically, the objects all come from the East Kazakhstan region, which is located to the easternmost end of Kazakhstan on the border with Russia and Mongolia. And time-wise, the material dates to between about 900 and 200 BC, which is the Sarka period for the region. And all of the material in the exhibition comes from excavations, most of which took place in the last three years, but certainly within Kazakhstan's recent history and its independence. And the excavations were funded by the regional government

of East Kazakhstan. They're excavated by our colleagues in Kazakhstan, and all of the pieces here are on loan. So they've come for the exhibition, but they will all be going back to Kazakhstan. And I think that's really important to stress, that this exhibition has the research and the voice and the interpretations of the archaeologists who excavated them. So it's a Kazakhstani exhibition, which is being interpreted through our lens here, but it really is their material. And you guys organised this during lockdown we did yes it's quite something you know what were you doing during lockdown i was just watching netflix for months on end but you guys you were doing them the heavy mileage to get this stuff sorted yeah it's quite a story we went out on the 8th of march 2020 a team from the fitzwilliam and we

had a manic sort of few days of photographing everything we could at the museum and we saw the pandemic obviously rolling in and we had to cut our trip short and when we landed I received lots of texts from friends in Kazakhstan saying are you okay you know and I looked on the news and realized that Kazakhstan had closed its borders while we were in the air so it was really a last minute sort of, you know, gathering everything we could possibly need, hopefully, for the exhibition. And then yes, it's all been developed and constructed during the pandemic. Proper Indiana Jones like that. So what is this period? What is the Sarka culture?

So the Sarka is a name which refers to a group of people who lived in what is now the East Kazakhstan region. And they were actually a group of people who emerged from around 900 BC, and we know that from a recent genetic study that's just been published. And they were some of the earliest people to express themselves using the Scythian animal style art. So when we talk about the Sarka, we're talking about people who were creators of Scythian culture. So we could call them the Scythians, but I think it's more appropriate that we refer to them as the Sarka who are Scythian peoples and they're creating Scythian culture. Now the term Sarka actually is used by the ancient Persians interchangeably with Scythians.

So we know that they are absolutely part of the Scythian world and we know that as well from the artifacts they created. But the Sarka is the term used in the region of Kazakhstan to refer to these Iron Age peoples. Because they seem, if memory serves me correct, they seem to have interactions with the Persians. Obviously Alexander the Great, the Battle of the Axartes River. These are the Sarka, I'm guessing, these people have these interactions first with the Persians, Alexander, and then ultimately his successors in the East. Yeah, and actually earlier as well. So we see, for example, with Darius I or Darius the Great, depending on which side of the battle you're on, but we have some monumental inscriptions and a wonderful relief that's been carved up on a

hillside and that was ordered by Darius I in ancient Persia. And this shows people who have been captured in battle and we have pictures of them. We also have an inscription. And one of the people captured was the Sarka king Skunker. So we have a named king of the Sarka people, which is very exciting for two reasons. One, because we actually see a picture of him and he's wearing this wonderful pointed hat. And we see him in relation to all the other peoples who were captured. But we also then have something which tells us that the Sarka had kings and that they were a hierarchical society because the Sarka themselves didn't write their own histories down. They probably had a

very strong oral tradition, but we only have a single inscription which came from Southeast Kazakhstan, which is a single line on a silver bowl, which has had various translations. But that's the only piece of probable Sarka writing we have. So everything else written about them is written about them by somebody else, for example, the Persians and the ancient Greeks. Yes, so, I mean, if the main literary descriptions for the Sarka come from Greco-Roman historians, how do they portray the Sarka?

So, yeah, this is something that we're trying to, I suppose, the myth we're trying to bust in this exhibition, because they've been portrayed by the Greeks, by the Persians, as barbarians. They were the great threat, they were fighting with these settled peoples and were described as nomadic warriors and the kind of destroyers of civilisation and civilised cultures. And actually what we are finding out increasingly and what we can see from the wonderful artefacts around us is that actually their own story that we can find out from the material culture is that actually their own story that we can find out from material culture is that they're incredibly sophisticated, they're complex society, and they are the creators of absolutely beautiful and intricate things. Absolutely. One last question before we really delve into that,

because you mentioned Eastern Kazakhstan, Sarka culture, but one key set of words which I think we definitely need to explain first of all is this whole idea of the Great Step. What is the Great Step? Step itself is a term used to describe a large area of grassland, so open grassy areas. And the Great Step, using great to describe the sheer magnitude of this grassland area, which stretches from eastern Siberia all the way across Eurasia to the Black Sea area, so to what is now in modern day Ukraine and into eastern Europe. So it really

is an absolutely vast area of open grassland. But what's really special about East Kazakhstan is that not only does it have this huge grassland steppe area, but also the mountains. So we have the Altai Mountains, which were on the eastern borders, and low mountains, the Tarbagatai. So we really have this landscape of, on the one hand, this step sort of stretching away to the west, but then bordered by these mountain zones. So we have mountains and rivers and lakes and a really quite varied landscape that the Sarka used in quite sophisticated ways. and a really quite varied landscape that the Sarka used in quite sophisticated ways. And in this landscape, we have surviving some extraordinary elite burials. Yes, yeah. So most of what we know about the Sarka comes from their burials. And this is partly or perhaps mainly because they built these huge burial mounds, otherwise known as kurganz, on the landscape, and some of them 10 metres in height, so the height of a three-storey building.

And they are present and visible on the landscape today. And we, in our exhibition, have material from three different cemeteries. And each of these cemeteries has about 200 to 300 kurganz from the Sarka period, each one. And this is just three Sarka cemeteries, and there are many, many more across the territory of Kazakhstan. So you get an idea of that visual scale of all of these burial mounds. They were actually built in long lines, usually along raised areas, ridges or plateaus or terraces. So their visual impact would have been absolutely incredible

when they were first built, but still remain visible on the landscape today. So anywhere you're driving in Kazakhstan, you're likely to spot some Sarkar Kurgans on the landscape. And so what is so significant about these artefacts we got from these Kurgans in the exhibition today? Why do they really stand out? They stand out partly because of the landscapes in which they've been built. They stand out partly because of the landscapes in which they've been built and the Sarkar seem to have this wonderful sense of drama and theatre in the places they chose to bury their dead One of the cemeteries is called Yelikisazi and this is a beautiful valley

It's almost like a hidden valley, you kind of access it through a pass which then opens out into this wonderful open area which is crossed by swamps and rivers and has ridges of drier land. And that's where the burial mounds are. And then it's encompassed by the mountains on the sides as well. Really very dramatic. But the reason why we have this material and why it's being excavated is because it's actually threatened heritage. One of the threats is looting. The burial mounds have actually been looted throughout their history. We have evidence that they were looted quite soon after they were constructed and quite soon after the person was buried. But lootings continue throughout history,

particularly in the 18th and 19th century with Tsarist empirical expansion. And then later into the modern period now, kurgans are still being looted and that's one threat. The other threat is climate change. So some of the exhibits we have here are made of organic materials, so wood, leather, textiles, for example. And these are preserved because they've been preserved in permafrost that's formed inside the burial mounds. Now, of course, with rising temperatures,

this permafrost is going to start melting and is starting to melt. And so this information, this wonderful information, you know, we have textiles. You can see the pattern on the textile. They're absolutely beautifully preserved. But we're going to start losing all of that information in the coming years as the global temperatures start to rise. So it's vital. It's a rescue operation in one way, isn't it? It is, yeah. It really is a sort of fight against time and population. But also, you know, the other aspect is that we have this wonderful

opportunity and equipment and knowledge that we can conduct extremely meticulous excavations, but then also analyse the material afterwards. And this material that we've got in these burials, it's not just humans that are buried in these kergans, is it? No. So one of the mysterious and wonderful things that the Saka and other Scythian groups did was to bury horses alongside people. And sometimes up to 17 horses are found in a burial mound. 17? 17 horses, incredible. Because they were renowned, weren't they, for their equine expertise, the prominence of the horse in their culture. Yes, exactly. We know from the tack, the harnesses and the equipment that was used that they were incredibly skilled horse riders. We know as well from the written sources. So excavations, it's important to stress that

the excavations have been conducted by Kazakhstani archaeologists. They've been funded by the regional government of East Kazakhstan. So it really is a Kazakhstani operation and the research is led by our colleagues in Kazakhstan. Professor Zainola Samashev, who's been excavating at Biral, has uncovered some incredible horse burials where each horse has its own unique outfit and often the oldest horse is given the most elaborate outfit with a headdress on top which transforms the horse into for example an ibex this mountain goat with these incredible horns which are made out of wood with gold overlay and kind of transforming the horses into the mythical beasts. But the fact

that it's the older horses, again, indicates that sort of lifelong relationship between people and their horses. The horses have their own life histories. I mean, absolutely. And the Ibex thing is really interesting. Let's just stay on that for the moment. I mean, do we have any idea why the Ibex, why the Sarka people were decided that, you know, this horse's own life after death, as it were, they were going to perhaps evolve into this other creature? Yeah, it is curious and tantalising. There's this whole mythological and symbolic world that we can get a glimpse of and start to understand. And we see that in the material culture, we see the types of animals that are depicted in the art tend to be wild animals. People and horses are less often represented in this material.

And we see, for example, the kind of high mountains. There seems to be a sort of sky realm, as it were. So there are depictions of mountain goats and sheep resting on what looks like either petals or clouds. And they're sitting, they've got their legs folded under them. They look really quite peaceful in this sort of sky. And you can imagine, you know, up in the mountains with the clouds above them and just catching a glimpse of one of these elusive animals. Then we also see predators, so possibly snow leopards, which are endemic to the region, panthers. The Caspian tiger actually lived sort of on the edges of rivers

down in the valleys. Sadly, those are now extinct, but we do see some sort of striped animals depicted. And again, you can imagine glimpsing a tiger as you're trying to gather some reeds or something for you to make your arrows. So we really see, you know, depiction of the realms and creatures who are sort of both here and not here. They're real and they're imagined and they both seem to occupy the same spaces. Well, let's then focus in. Let's really go into this gold now with the human burial. And one name which really seemed to stand out, I'm sure they're all really awesome, but just having a look around now, is right here sitting

right next to us now the young archer first of all let's set the scene what is this young archer burial yes so this is a wonderful discovery that was made by professor samashev in 2018 as part of a new program of excavation that the regional government was sponsoring to sort of preserve and research this wonderful heritage. And so at the cemetery site of Yeleke Sazi, one of the groups of Kurgans, so it's group two, and one of the Kurgans, Kurgan IV, it's not a particularly huge one. It's not, you know, one of the tallest or the biggest. But when Professor Samashoff and his team started to excavate, they realised that they had come across what is only the second undisturbed Saka Warial burial on the territory of Kazakhstan. So the

last one was discovered in the 1960s in Southeast Kazakhstan. But what's really interesting in Kurgan IV is that it was actually a double burial when it was first created. So we have one burial, which is this teenage archer. And we know from his bones that he was no older than 18 when he died. So he was sort of, you know, on the cusp of manhood. And he was buried along with a younger relative, most likely his sister. Again, the genetic study has been done in their first degree relatives. So it's his sister. And she was about 13 or 14 when she died and they were buried together. But what happened was that the way the burial was constructed is usually there's a sort of log coffin and each individual is laid in a log coffin

and then a sort of log cabin is built around them with a stone chamber encasing it and then turf and clay and rammed earth are used to construct the burial itself which is then encased in stones. And at some point in antiquity, the central chamber, half of it collapsed and the stones covered the young archer. We're calling him an archer because he was buried with arrows and a bow case and a dagger and these wonderful things all overlaid with gold. So his side of the chamber collapsed over him. So when robbers broke in, grave robbers came into the central chamber, they saw the sister and she was completely looted.

And it's really quite violent. You know, her bones were scattered. We've got some of her long bones and a piece of her cranium preserved, but completely scattered. And she was stripped of nearly all of her grave goods, save for one tiny, which is actually my favourite piece in the exhibition, a tiny little bone weaving tablet that was with her bones. It's really quite a violent event, and particularly in contrast to the youth who was lying peacefully and undisturbed. So it's really quite remarkable to see the fate of both of these young people who were a family buried together. One absolutely untouched burial and then his sister almost

entirely looted. Tantalisingly, a few gold pieces were found in what's called the dromos, which is a sort of corridor or tunnel that leads into the burial chamber. So possibly dropped by the robbers or could it have been they were deposited by family? We just don't know. But it's a hint that she too had an extremely rich burial. But all that we know that was actually in association with her bones was this little weaving tablet that we have. And it's incredibly poignant because it reminds us how much is lost and is being lost of this material, things that end up looted and on the black market or in, you know, private collections or things that have just been destroyed over time. Absolutely. I mean, you get through the exhibition, don't you? And then you see that one object, as you say, is incredibly poignant compared to the

amount that has survived. And it does sound, from what you're saying, it's almost a coincidence, a chance, a real good fortune that one barrel has survived. And it does sound, from what you're saying, it's almost a coincidence, a chance, a real good fortune that one barrel has survived. But in the process of that, the other one, is that there's almost nothing left. Yes, exactly. And for me as an archaeologist, it was important to stop at that point

and just to reflect on the fact that we don't have all the answers and whose truth are we speaking in this exhibition? Whose story can we tell and whose story have we lost? And I think having that point of reflection is just continually important as archaeologists, as academics, you know, we always need to check where our information is coming from, where our assumptions are and who exactly it is that we are talking about. And I just think it's so important as researchers that we have those moments. So let's go back to the young archer and talk me through these incredible grave goods that have

survived from this burial. Let's start with the smallest, because you have loads and loads of little beads, don't you? These are really interesting. because you have loads and loads of little beads, don't you? These are really interesting. Yes, so these wonderful beads, we actually have five different types of microbeads shown in the exhibition. And one type was found around the feet of the archer. And when I say microbeads, they really are microbeads.

They are one millimetre in diameter. Just over 1,700 of them were discovered around his feet. And what we can see during the excavation was that there was a sort of darkish shadow in the shape of his shoes, which had obviously decayed over time. But these beads were left implying that they would have been sewn onto his shoes. Now, I should mention here my PhD student, Sartana Amir. She herself is from Kazakhstan. She's actually from the East Kazakhstan region, but she's studying for her PhD here in Cambridge and working on this material for her research.

And she would tell you that these are the star of the show, these microbeads, and she's been looking at them under a high-powered microscope. With the shoe beads, we can see that they were made from a single flat strip of gold that was then rolled up and then probably cut into shape. And then obviously they were sewn onto the shoes. So it's just this incredible commitment of skill and time to not only create these beads, but then to sew them onto shoes. There's also the further story behind

them about why put beads on your shoes. Well, we know that horses are really, really important to the Saka people. There's another piece which we can talk about in a minute, which indicates why we know that horses were important, particularly for the archer. But if you're on horseback and you've got shiny shoes, that means you're showing off your wealth to somebody who's standing on the ground. And again, it's an expression. It's a kind of showing off and establishing your status. You've got shiny beads on your shoes because you are showing them to somebody else who is not up there on their horse kiss my shiny shoes kind of thing isn't it yeah and then we see they're also wonderful in contrast to the talk which is around the neck of the archer

and that is a really hefty piece of gold it's made from a single gold rod it weighs over 300 grams and the single rod of gold was then twisted under torsion and twisted into shape and we can see under the microscope the point at which the gold actually started to split because it was under so much pressure as it was being shaped so this is you know such contrast, those tiny, tiny beads, which actually represent a huge amount of work and somebody's time. And then you've got this really heavy piece of gold that you've got around your neck. So it's absolute status symbol, you know, really showing off that wealth and status of this young archer.

It is majestic in my mind instantly because we were filming there recently, but it's a great example and you've got some fantastic reconstructions of what it would have looked like at the exhibition here but if you go to someone like Vindolanda where they found that horse armour and they had the reconstructed horse armour there and you know it was really designed to impress the champion as it were once again that idea you know especially if they're on a stallion the male horses especially I'm guessing then, we're not talking ponies, but these horses are being quite sturdy, big animals. Yeah, by today's standards, I think they would be classed

as sort of larger, medium-sized ponies, as it were, by height. But they're certainly horses. And they stood, I think the average was about 13 hands high. So they're not huge, but they were very finely bred, you know, really well bred battle horses. And we know that people lived and fought and died alongside their horses. But they also drank horse milk. So the mares were equally important. And they ate horse meat as well. And so we know that there's a whole economy, the horses, not just transport, but used for all of these other economic and life activities.

So it's really, really close relationships. Actually, at the site of Pazirik, which is just the other side of the Altai Mountains from East Kazakhstan, which is that much further north, the permafrost has preserved the skins of horses. And we actually know that it was geldings. that the permafrost has preserved the skins of horses. And we actually know that it was geldings. So the young castrated males were the ones who were ridden and in the burials. And Larker-Echt, Professor Larker-Echt, who was at Cambridge and is now at the University of Graz in Austria, has studied horse burial,

has told me that geldings are considered to be the best mounts. So we're talking about the Saka being really skilled in horse husbandry. They knew which were the best horses for riding. They knew how to manage the herds. We find the male horses in the burials. And the assumption then is that it's the female horses which are cared for in different ways and had different status. So it's really, again, this sophisticated relationship between horses, people, landscape, economy, symbolic activity, religion. It's incredible. Absolutely. And you mentioned that there was this other object from the exhibition which really emphasises the importance of someone who would have been on

horseback in the society. What was this other object that you were hinting at? Yeah, so we've got two of them and they're little bronze hinged pieces and they look a little bit like a horse's bit. So there's a central interlocking ring joint which is articulated and still fully functional to this day. It's just an amazing piece of bronze work and we found one, well I say we, it's not my excavation, and there was one at each side of the archer's hip and they have little attachments on either end. And one of the attachments fits perfectly into the gold overlay of the scabbard for this bronze dagger that was found. And it seems that this was an attachment that would have gone onto a weapon on one end and then attached onto a weapon's belt.

weapons belt. And the reason why this is so important is because you look at that interlocking ring joint and realise that this is a piece of equipment designed to act as a stabiliser for when the archer was on horseback to stop the weapons belt and to stop his bow case and quiver from banging against his leg when he was riding. So it's actually an incredibly sophisticated piece of engineering. And it's very small and it's easy when you're looking at all the gold in the burial to sort of overlook this little piece of bronze, but it's just such a wonderful piece and it just tells this much bigger story. Hello, if you're enjoying this podcast, then I know you're going to be fascinated by the new episodes of the history hit warfare podcast. From the polionic battles and Cold War confrontations to the Normandy landings and 9-11, we reveal new perspectives on how war has shaped and changed our modern world. I'm your host, James Rogers, and each week, twice a week, I team up with fellow historians, military veterans,

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wants to either swamp the place in trillion dollar wars, or it wants to have nothing at all to do with it. And in relation to a country like Afghanistan, both approaches are catastrophic. Join us on the History Hit Warfare podcast, where we're on the front line of military history. So let's talk about this bow case. You found the remains of this bow case in the burial. Yes. So I should say, really, when the archaeologists who were excavating the burial realised what they'd come across, they immediately stopped and arranged for the whole burial to be removed in a huge, great big block. So they stabilised the soil around the archer and built an enormous crate and then transported that whole burial to the East Kazakhstan Regional Museum so that it could be excavated in the museum

absolutely meticulously to capture all this information and what they discovered as they were excavating were the remains of a leather combined bow case and quiver which was known as a goritos and this is a specific piece of equipment that we find across the Scythian world and it was a mark of being a Scythian was that you had this piece of equipment with a wonderful gold overlay running along the length of it and then an end piece which is sort of this pear-shaped piece you can see in the exhibition that would have overlain the leather and had this wonderful heraldic design. But excitingly, we have some of the leather preserved, which has the impressions of the arrows still preserved within it. And you can see it's very, very fine leather. And we will be analysing it to see what species of animal it came from.

But inside this Goritos were 40 bronze arrows, many of which have their original binding and part of the shaft preserved as well that's either made of wood or possibly reed. And we're going to be looking at them in more detail here in Cambridge to identify what the binding was made of. We suspect maybe horsehair is the top candidate, but also what the shaft of the arrows is made from as well. maybe horsehair is the top candidate, but also what the shaft of the arrows is made from as well. I believe your colleagues are turning off the lights for a side exhibition, hence the possible noise in the background that our listeners might have heard there. But Rebecca, if we carry on regardless, I mean, we're just looking at these arrowheads now. They're not the usual arrowheads because normally when you think of arrowheads, you think perhaps just the tip has just survived, isn't it? But as you say, there's so much more that has survived in these burials, which is just, once again,

really emphasising the extraordinary amount of archaeology that has survived from this particular burial. Yes, and I think it's partly the preservation conditions here. So Yellow Coast is a bit further south than Burel and Pazirik, we have permafrost preservation but it's possible that there's maybe some process of freeze drying which is preserving these pieces of leather and wood and organic materials or it could be patches perhaps of permafrost and we haven't got the textiles preserved in the same way at Birel but we still have these incredible pieces of leather and wood surviving but it's also a testament to the patience and delicacy of the excavation by our colleagues in Kazakhstan, who really haven't missed anything in the excavation.

And we have all of this context and all of this wonderful archaeological information that we can study. And if we then go back to the Goritoska, I'd love to talk about the design and the decoration. We're going back to gold again in this burial. but the cases of the weapons and not just the bow case, they were very richly decorated, weren't they? Yes, exactly. And what's really interesting, and this is something that Sartanat is looking at for her PhD, is not only the metalworking itself, but that relationship between the gold and the metalworking and the organic materials that they were used to decorate and were helped to shape it. So for example with the bow case with the Goritos the end plate which is this pear-shaped piece when you look at the back of it you can see that it's been shaped around

something. It's been kind of folded up over what is probably the leather end of the bow case and there are little holes along the side where perhaps it was pinned or sewn into place. So really it's that relationship. It's not just metal working, it's actually working with multiple types of materials. But the metal working itself, the gold working of this Goritos M plate is just incredible. The design was created using tiny little beads which were individually soldered onto this sort of sheet of gold and to create this design which is a heraldic design we have two stags which have their backs to each other but then their heads are twisted round facing and their noses are almost touching and then the ears and the nose and the eyes of the stags are picked out in precious stones.

They're picked out in turquoise and lapis lazuli. But they're also not quite identical. So there's this wonderful, almost binary opposition going on with these two deer. And then different stones are used in different places, almost opposite. So one has a lapis eye and one has a turquoise eye. And they're not quite identical. They're not quite identical. They're not quite symmetrical. And then there's also a little sort of scroll shape at the bottom of the design.

And there's one bead missing. And as far as Seltzner can see from the microscope, it hasn't fallen off. There isn't a scar where it was. It's almost as though it was deliberately left off. And we don't know if that's actually the case, but it's really curious to see this. There's deep, deep messaging and symbolism going on behind these designs of the animals themselves who are just beautifully depicted in this classic animal-style art shape. So these very highly stylised creatures,

which are picked out with these little gold granulations. Quickly also to put my mind at rest, lapis lazuli. My mind is thinking, although I might be wrong in this, my mind is thinking Afghanistan and the mountain of Badakhshan. But where do we think this lapis lazuli came from? Yes, that certainly is one source. But there is another source in the Baikal region, so near Lake Baikal in Siberia, which is still about 800 kilometres from Yelikivsai Sea, so it's quite a distance. But that's another known source, which is probably the likely candidate, given that we have this big steppe interactions

and large-scale trade across the steppe zone. Brilliant. Fair enough. There is one other object. We could talk about so many different objects, but there's only one more object until we really start wrapping up. And this is still from that same burial. And we're going to keep on weapons because when looking at the guide that you sent across and looking at all the information for the exhibition, this was the image right at the top. I think you know which one I'm talking about. This scabbard, talk us through what this scabbard is

and what it depicts. Yeah, so this is an absolutely incredible piece of gold working. So the young archer was buried with a bronze sword, which has on its pommel some kind of feline predator, possibly snow leopards, two snow leopard heads. And underneath it on the hilt, there are the horns of a mountain sheep, an argali. And then the sword seems to have been deliberately broken before it was deposited. So this is probably a ritual killing of the sword, of the dagger, sorry, before it was buried. And we find this across burials in the ancient world.

We have examples from England as well of weapons being deliberately broken before they're deposited, possibly to break that power. I mean, the amount of tension between predator and prey with those wild mountain sheep and the snow leopards is sort of giving this, you know, perhaps power or some kind of energy for this dagger, which has been killed. But then the scabbard was made from wood and some of the wood did survive. It wasn't strong enough to travel to the exhibition here in Cambridge but some of the wood was surviving and then this wooden scabbard was then overlaying with what's made up of four sheets of gold that are joined together to create an absolutely wonderful design again with these tiny little gold beads, little gold granulations that created this design, again with the precious stones picking out details of the animal's eyes and noses. And what we see on the design at the hilt end, there are

three deer and they're depicted in a very classic animal style. They have their legs folded up under them and their heads are turned around behind them and their ears are up and they're quite alert. And the reason why they're so alert is because in the middle of these three deer there is a feline predator again a snow leopard or a panther or a tiger some kind of feline it's got a long tail and it's been halted mid-run and is standing on tiptoes with its legs stiffly out in front of it as though it's suddenly stopped and he's turning its head up to snarl at these three deer and that snarling face is again picked out with the turquoise and with the lapis and that

scene of predator and prey you know picked out in tiny little dots as it were little little balls of gold but just this absolutely powerful moment between predator and prey and that's a recurring theme we find in other objects as well as this dynamic between predator and prey and that's a recurring theme we find in other objects as well as this dynamic between predator and prey and then the actual shaft of the scabbard has four deer heads and their noses are touching almost in the middle and they have these long exaggerated antlers that run up the length of it again picked out in this gold granulation. So the whole design itself is beautiful as a piece of art, but then it has this much deeper dynamic symbolism going on behind it as well. It's absolutely incredible.

This piece, it really seems, and so many other pieces as well, it really seems like a microcosm for this exceptional craftsmanship that these ancient people had. It must be revealing so much in regards to that aspect of the ancient Saka culture. Yeah, what we're really finding and the more time you spend with these objects and even things like drawing them, or if you trace around and draw the piece, you realise how sympathetically observed the animals are. Their muscles are picked out in such detail. The stag, which you will see on all of our posters

and promotional materials, again, you can see the muscles of that stag on his neck are straining and his eye is just really delicately picked out. So we see that really sympathetic and kind of deeply observational depictions of animals as they were, but then they are arranged in these incredibly symbolic, stylized ways. So it's almost that tension between observed nature and then through this sort of social and religious lens. And then when you look more closely and you start to look with a microscope and really, really look at the work behind these pieces, you see the human hand. And that's what's really moving, is to really start to understand the people behind all of these objects.

And I think it comes back again to these microbeads. So in addition to the ones that were at the archer's feet, we have over 10,000 tiny little microbeads. They look like a pile of sand from afar, and actually from quite up close. And then when you look really closely, you realise that each one of over 10,000 beads was made by somebody and was then sewn onto clothing. And that's the sort of main point, is that nearly all of these objects of gold were made to be sewn onto clothing, depicted and worn

on weaponry or on horse harnesses so they were all made to be worn and we have sewing loops on the back so again it's that relationship between the materials the Saka are working with wood and textiles and leather and gold and precious stones and it's just this mastery of all these different materials but it just comes back to that human skill and that human time and and human handiwork that we can see behind all of these objects here i mean absolutely and i guess another thing that this must be shining more of a light on and we've talked about the burials we haven't even really talked yet about the archaeology that you got from actual settlements is this also revealing more about the social hierarchy, the whole structure of the Saka?

Well, I mean, there are so many stories we could tell about the Saka. But the other, you know, huge element in this exhibition really is that we have reconstruction of two female burials, and really exploring that role of women in society. So we have a reconstruction of two burials of women who have had incredibly rich burials with these wonderful gold headdresses, a fur cloak with gold appliques. We're talking about really high status women. And it just brings out those questions about the assumptions that we might be making about gender roles. We know for other Scythian burials that women were buried with weapons. One reconstruction here has a small knife, but we know that women were also buried

with bows and with daggers as well. But also about their own roles that women had in society. So one of our reconstructions is from Uzha, which is again near Yelikislazi in East Kazakhstan. And this woman had this wonderful gold headdress with this sort of griffin-like bird and ferns depicted in gold. But she was buried with a whole variety of medicinal herbs. And she had a mortar, which was also used for grinding them, and various vessels and all of these different herbs. So her role seems to have been this herbalist, but obviously very high status because again, she has this wonderful gold headdress. She was buried in this rich grave.

And then from the settlements, again, it's very hard to identify gendered activity from settlement deposits because, of course, we're usually rummaging through people's rubbish and the things they left behind. Or in the few cases, you know, catastrophic events such as must farm where you have a burning event and everything's preserved but even so it's very very hard to capture gendered activities but we do have for example a wonderful big saddle quern which is a big grinding stone and which has been incredibly well used and we know from other prehistoric settlements, and we know, for example, from earlier in the Neolithic period at the beginning of farming, where more populations have been studied, that the women actually were grinding the grain using these saddle quern with this hand stone that they would rub over to grind the grain. And we know from those populations that

the women actually had stronger arm muscles and their bone density was greater than that of modern day varsity rowers here in Cambridge. There's a recent study. Something, yes. Yeah, so Dr. Alison Murray was here in Cambridge and studied varsity rowers and Neolithic female populations. So again, it comes back to that labour and we're trying, again, it is hard, it's hard to find those kind of gendered stories and roles sometimes who had which role within society and again I think that's something that research will hopefully allow us to access a bit more about. I mean Rebecca I can't not now

therefore ask the A word the Amazon's words and like the historical truth if any behind that now of course we think of the Scythians possibly. Could the Sarka have been another possible historical influence on the creation of this idea of there being Amazons? I think it's one of these things where the Sarka and Scythian peoples have been so mythologised and so written about by other people's assumptions about what women should and should not be doing. I mean, we know already from burials that, you know, women had high status

roles within society and that they were buried as warriors. So, you know, we can start to get the economy and some of that kind of social idea behind the myth. But I don't know if it was these are good answer. It was perhaps an impossible question for me to ask but I asked it anyway that's what happens. So we talked about you know social hierarchy, we've talked about burial, what else are we learning about the Sarka from these objects that survive? Yeah so I think coming back really to the settlement that we mentioned earlier so the settlement of Akbaor, which was discovered in 2018 by Professor Samashev. And this is a settlement which is located in the foothills of a low mountain range, but has these incredible rock formations. I should say also that there is

rock art is another huge part of the landscape that we didn't really have the opportunity to explore in this exhibition. But rock art and what's known as these deer stones, which are standing stones, steely, with these deer and wonderful images carved on them. And then the settlement, which seems to be nestled at the foot of this incredible mountain range. And this is really exciting because so much research and so much of our knowledge comes from the burials. They're so prominent on the landscape and also from what other people have written about the Saka and how they were all nomadic and, you know, almost this kind of monolithic interpretation. And, you know, nomadic pastoralism is really important. And it was an economy that was developed from around the first millennium BC

to be really efficient in using the different pasture lands throughout the year and herding sheep and goat and horses and cattle to use that best pasture land but new research and the most recent research is also identifying settlements and so the site of Akbaor has for example this grinding stone. There are beautiful ceramics made from different types of clay with wonderful decorations on them. And we have in the exhibition here, there's a stone loom weight and some ceramic spindle whorls, which we use for spinning yarn and then weaving textiles. So we're getting much more information about these kind of day-to-day craft activities

and the whole range of economy that the Sarka practiced. And that's really exciting. The closer you look in the new research, you just get much more complexity and sophistication in all aspects of Sarka life. Rebecca, I can imagine it must be absolutely amazing to do an exhibition like this, unlike anything we've seen in the UK before, but also to kind of lift this lid, this portrayal in, let's say, the ancient Greek sources of these being nomadic backward people. And yet the archaeology is just showing that these people of ancient eastern Kazakhstan were so much more than that. Yes, and I think that's what's really been important. And I found in curating this exhibition,

it's coming back to the people and the cultures behind it, but also understanding the interpretations and our own biases. And I mentioned my colleagues, Professor Abdesh Tolubayev, who's the other sort of main archaeologist who's been leading the excavations, who's also carried out a lot of ethnographic research as well into the ethnic Kazakhs, and he is himself Kazakh. And it's, again, understanding that complexity, but also the interpretations that we might make of some of this material, as opposed to the interpretations that our colleagues in Kazakhstan would make. And I think that process is just so exciting and energising

because it's working with people who have dedicated decades of their life to it and have this deep, deep understanding of the landscape and of their own modern culture, but also then bringing together these new ideas and really working together to analyse this detail, you know, scientifically, but also kind of coming back to those human stories again. And that kind of synergy, I think, between researchers and kind of working cross-culturally is really exciting. It's really exciting. And also just to clarify at the end, you're saying these artefacts, they've only recently been discovered, haven't they? There's still so many stories that are to be found from within these objects. Yes. So every item in this exhibition is on loan from the East Kazakhstan Regional Museum of Local History. And it will all go back to Kazakhstan at the end of the exhibition. So it's

a complete loan exhibition. And, you know, the Fitzwilliam is not holding on to anything. Nothing's going to stay in the UK. It's all going back to Kazakhstan. But we hope this is just the beginning of a longer term relationship and research relationship with all this wonderful material. I mean, absolutely. These strong connections to learn more about ancient Eastern Kazakhstan. Rebecca, this has been brilliant. I could ask questions about this all day, but I'm going to have to leave our listeners hanging. If they want to find out more, however, they just need to come to this exhibition. How long is this exhibition on for?

Yeah, so the exhibition is on until the 30th of January. Tickets are completely free. They do need to be booked, obviously, for numbers in the galleries, but you can go to the Fitzwilliam website and book your free tickets and then we also have the catalogue available which is one of the only English or the only English language publication for these recent excavations and has some really detailed archaeological information as well as some really beautiful photography of these amazing pieces. It really is and it's really beautifully laid out. Rebecca this has been an awesome chat and it only goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast.

No, thank you. It's really wonderful to talk about this material.