The Sauromatian culture () was an Iranic Iron Age culture of horse nomads in the area of the lower Volga River to the southern Ural Mountain, in southern Russia, dated to the 6th to 4th centuries BCE. Archaeologically, the Sauromatian period itself is sometimes also called the "Blumenfeld period" (6th-4th centuries BCE), and is followed by a transitional Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian period (4th-2nd centuries BCE), also called the "Prokhorov period".
The name of this culture originates from the Sauromatians (; ), an ancient Scythian people mentioned by Graeco-Roman authors, and with whom it is identified. The Sauromatian culture was nomadic: no permanent settlements have been found, and they are only known from some temporary camps and large kurgan tombs.
Origins The Sauromatian culture emerged during the 6th century BCE out of elements of the Bronze Age Srubnaya culture and the neighbouring Andronovo culture, combined with Saka nomadic elements from Central Asia. The Sauromatian culture was first mentioned and named by Herodotus (484–c.425 BCE), who explained that it was located to the east of the Don River, 15 days distance from the northern part of the Sea of Azov.
Transitional period (8th-7th centuries BCE)
The Andronovo culture and the Timber Grave culture (Srubnaya culture) seem to have merged into a transitional culture during the 8th–7th centuries BCE. Still, there are wide regional and ethnic variations: the western populations of the lower Volga River were mainly influenced by the Timber Grave culture and their anthropomorphic type was Mediterranean, while smaller populations in the Samara-Ural area were mainly influenced by the Andronovo culture and had Europoïd-Andronovo anthropomorphic types.
The Sauromatian period (6th-4th century BCE) conventionally starts in the 6th century CE, after this transitional period. Throughout the period, an important influx of nomadic populations from Central Asia took place, which shaped the Sauramatian culture of the southern Ural area.
The Sauromatian culture also interacted with the western Ciscaucasian group of the Scythian culture, due to which it exhibited many resemblances to this latter group of the Scythian culture. From the 7th-6th century BCE, Sauromatian artistic designs started to appear in western Scythian art, which became more intricate as a result.
Culturally, the Sauromatian culture was also affected by the culture of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, whose influence reached them through Central Asia. This Achaemenid influence was most prominent in the north-eastern part of Sauromatian territory during the 6th century BCE. Greek influence took over from the 4th century BCE, and Greek artifacts can be found in the nomadic burials of this period, as far as the southern Urals.
Location and identification The Sauromatian culture covered an area ranging from the eastern foothills of the lower Don river in the west to the lower Volga river in the east, and from the southern Ural Mountains in the north to the eastern foothills of the Caucasus in the south.
The Sauromatian culture was divided into two main local groups: a Samara-Ural group from the southern Urals to the Caspian Sea, and a Lower Volga group located between the Volga River, the Don River, and the Transvolga. The Samara-Ural group of the Sauromatian culture has not yet been identified with any population recorded by ancient authors. Nomads of the south Uralian region are sometimes identified with the tribes mentioned by ancient authors, such as the Issedones or the Dahae. As can be inferred from their closeness, close kin connections existed between the Lower Volga and the Samara-Ural groups. Still, an argument has been made that they also could be considered as two different cultures.
The Samara-Ural group
The region south of the Urals was very sparsely populated, "almost uninhabited", during the end of the Bronze Age, as known burials, which were of the Andronovo type, were extremely few. Archaeological research suggests that the area only started to develop and population started to increase when it received waves of Asian nomadic migrations from the 7th-6th century BCE.
From the 7th century BCE, Pamir-Ferghana anthropological types started to appear, and Eastern influence became prevalent, mainly through migrations. Characteristic Saka-style deer stones are recorded in near the kurgans of Gumarovo. Recent studies suggest that the population of the southern Urals actually became quite multi-ethnic, and the term "Early nomads of the southern Ural piedmont" is now often preferred to the traditional historical term "Sauromatians". Early Saka nomads had started to settle in the Southern Urals as early as the 7th century BCE, coming from Central Asia, the Altai-Sayan region, and Central and Northern Kazakhstan. The Itkul culture (7th-5th century BCE) is one of these Early Saka cultures, based in the eastern foothills of the Urals and specialized in metallurgy, which was assimilited into the Early Sarmatian culture. Circa 600 BCE, groups from the Saka Tasmola culture settled in the southern Urals. Circa 500 BCE, other groups from the area of Ancient Khorezm settled in the western part of the southern Urals, who also assimilated into the Early Sarmatians. All these nomadic populations are identified by their kurgan burial mounds and their numerous artifacts, such as Taksai kurgans (c.500 BCE).: "The southern Ural piedmont is traditionally associated with the Sauromatians, a collective ethnonym used for all nomadic people living in the vast region east of the Don at the time of Herodotus. However, recent studies see the inhabitants of this region as multi-ethnic and favour the more neutral term of early nomads of the southern Ural piedmont. While the Bronze Age in the southern Ural region is archaeologically well evidenced, there seems to be a hiatus in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. It has been suggested that new nomad groups came into the region during the 6th century BC. The earliest archaeological evidence of this immigration is a group of kurgan burials of the late 6th or early 5th century BC, of which Taksai-1 is part." Other south Ural kurgans of the 6th-4th centuries BCE include the kurgans of Kyryk-Oba, Lebedevka, Tara-Butak, Akoba, Nagornoye, Zhalgyzoba etc...
Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatian period As a result, a large-scale integrated union of nomads from Central Asia formed in the area in the 5th–4th century BCE, with fairly uniformized cultural practices. This cultural complex, with notable ‘‘foreign elements’’, corresponds to the ‘‘royal’’ burials of the Filippovka kurgans (c. 400 BCE), and defines the "Early Prokhorovka period" of the Late Sauromatian-Early Sarmatians. The Sauromatians of the southern Ural, such as those buried in the Filippovka kurgan (c.400 BCE), combined Western (Timber Grave and Andronovo) and Eastern characteristics, and generally displayed an increased incidence of eastern Asiatic features. They most closely resembled the Saka populations of Central Asia, particularly from the Altai region (Pazyryk), and were very different from the western Scythians, or even the Sarmatians of the Volga River area to the west. The archaic stle of the animal style in the Filippovka kurgan prompted some authors to date it to the 6th century BCE.
The culture of the Samara-Ural group ended in the first decades of the 3rd century BCE (circa 300-250 BCE), possibly due to changing climatic conditions and the arrival of new nomads from Central Asia and southern Western Siberia, possibly Alans, which defined the succeeding Sarmatian period. Sarmatian culture is generally thought to have formed in the Ural steppes, and the general westward mouvement of these nomadic tribes may have provoked the demise of the classical Volga Sauromatians, who may even have belonged to a different genetic profile.
The Lower Volga group
The section of the Lower Volga group of the Sauromatian culture located between the Don and Volga rivers corresponds to the Sauromatians mentioned by Graeco-Roman authors. They first formed during the 7th century BCE, after the Scythians had migrated westwards and become the masters of the Pontic–Caspian steppe. The historian Marek Jan Olbrycht has suggested that the Sauromatians might have been a Scythian group who migrated from Media during the period of Scythian presence in Western Asia, after which they merged with Maeotians who had a matriarchal culture. These early Sauromatians lived in the area of the Don river, near the Sea of Azov in the North Caucasus, and their western neighbours were the Scythians proper.
The Sauromatians may have been the () people mentioned in the s as one of the five peoples following the Zoroastrian religion, along with the (), (), (), and (), although this identification is still uncertain.
Social and economic development
The burials of the Lower Volga Sauromatians were poorer and less sophisticated than those of their neighbours, either those of the Scythians to the southwest or the southern Urals Sauromatians to the northeast. This suggests that Lower Volga Sauromatians had a lesser level of social and property differentiation. The kurgans of the southern Urals Sauromatians were much larger and richer, suggesting the existence of a rich military aristocracy in the 5th century BCE. No such burials have been found in the Volga area, suggesting that a more basic clan structure remained in place, with a poorer and weaker military aristocracy.: "In level of social and economic development as well as in culture the Sauromatian tribes were somewhat more primitive than the Scythian, although a number of common characteristics can be found. The Sauromatian kurgans which have been excavated are as a whole poorer than those of the Scythians; they also show that there was less social and property differentiation between the Sauromatian aristocracy and the ordinary members of the community. More developed, evidently, were the tribes from the southern foothills of the Urals, where the large and rich kurgans of a military aristocracy dating to the 5th century B.C. - such as the Pyatimary group on the River llek - are known. No such burial grounds have to date been discovered in the Volga area. This has led scholars to suppose that the clan structure disintegrated more slowly amongst the Sauromatae in the area between the Volga and the Don and that the clan-tribal aristocracy here was economically and militarily weaker than the aristocracy near the Urals."
Political development According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the Sauromatians were descendants of Amazons and young Scythians who lived in the area beyond the Tanais. Women rode on horseback, joined their husbands in war, and wore the same dress as men. Furthermore:
"They do not set aside their maidenhood until they have killed three enemies, and even then they do not enter into a marriage until they have made the traditional sacrifices. Once a woman has taken a husband to herself, she stops riding horseback unless there is a tribe-wide military campaign. These women do not have a right breast. While they are still infants, their mothers apply a specially made hot bronze device to their right breast and burn it so that growth stops. The result is that all growth and strength shifts to the right shoulder and arm."
The Sauromatians spoke a "corrupt form" of the Scythian language, which might be explained by the influence of the Andronovo culture in the development of the Sauromatian culture.
During the 6th to 5th centuries BCE, the Lower Volga Sauromatians were constituted of either a number of tribes or of a single tribe sharing a common ethnic identity, and united into a single polity bounded to the west by the Don river and to the east by the Volga river. By the end of the 5th century BCE, groups of the Sauromatians had moved to the west and settled around Lake Maeotis along the Royal Scythians and the Maeotians.