An ornate 1,800-year-old belt assemblage has been discovered in a Ukrainian forest, potentially belonging to a nomadic warrior who fought on horseback.
Local residents found the artefacts in Chechen Forest and handed them over to Antonii Moisei of Bukovinian State Medical University (BSMU) for examination.
Among the finds is a square metal buckle just 2.1 cms across, decorated with turquoise blue and yellow enamel.
Moisei dated the buckle to between the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD from its form and decorative style.
An ornate belt fitting was also found nearby, along with three small circular metal objects. These are thought to have been part of the same belt and have been used to reconstruct its possible original appearance.
Moisei states that the belt “might have been of a Sarmatian cavalryman from Black Sea region”, but cannot say who it belonged to.
The Sarmatians were nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples who inhabited large parts of Eurasian Steppe and northern Black Sea region in antiquity.
They had cavalry traditions and a complex relationship with the Roman Empire: some Sarmatian groups fought against Rome, others served in Roman armies or maintained contacts with communities inside empire.
The enamel decoration on the Ukrainian finds is similar to craft traditions in the Roman provinces.
This means that the fittings may have come to the region through contacts between Roman world communities and communities living beyond its frontiers.
They might have been obtained through trade or exchange but another possibility is that they were bought as spoils.
Belts decorated with ornaments were not only practical items but could also show the status, identity or cultural connections of the wearer.
However, the circumstances of discovery obscure the original context of the assemblage.
The objects were found by local residents not during a controlled archaeological excavation and no burial or settlement has been reported.
As a result it is not known whether the belt was deliberately placed there, accidentally lost or originally part of a wider archaeological context.
The association with a Sarmatian cavalryman therefore remains an interpretation based mainly on form, date and cultural parallels of the surviving fittings.
Moisei plans to analyse the assemblage more closely and compare it with finds from Roman provincial and nomadic contexts (manufacture and decoration).
The study could tell where the fittings were made and give a clearer picture of the cultural contacts between communities around the Black Sea with the Roman world in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.
Sources : Буковинский державний медицийский университет