The Jug from Sarata

Nadiia O.  Gavryliuk

doi:10.15407/archaeologyua2018.03.085

Nadiia O. Gavryliuk Institute of Archaeology, the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2369-5701

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15407/archaeologyua2018.03.085

Keywords: Early Scythian period, Nothern Black Sea area, Knauer, Sarata, Culture of Basarabi.

Abstract

The results of the visual study of well-known and repeatedly published jag from grave no. 13 of the barrow no. 10 near Sarata village in Odesa Region are shown in the paper. The barrow was excavated by professor of the Kyiv St. Volodymyr University F.I. Knauer in 1888—1890. According to the publication of the first results of study, the localization and composition of the barrow group is specified. In the paper the burial no. 13 and the vessel which was placed behind the scull are described.

The study of the decoration of Sarata jug de visu in the National Museum of History of Ukraine allows to conclude that the volutes typical for the Basarabi Culture were ending not only with curls as was previously considered but with two heads of snakes (fig. 4, 3). The volute with the snake head was filled with white paste on the right side, and with pink paste on the left. The enlargement of images suggests that the heads appeared later. They were marked by deep notches, not by a small-notched stamp by which the ornament of the vessel was spouted. The white paste filling the head of snake is more dense on the right side. These observations somewhat change the opinion on the image on Sarata vessel.

Probably the images were made in different time. So, the initial decoration was engraved during the manufacture of the vessel among Culture of Basarabi. The image of the snake heads was added later. Perhaps it was done while preparing the vessel for a funerary ritual — after all the snake image had a chthonic meaning in many cultures. There was made a conclusion that the jug was decorated not with geometrical but with subject ornament. The aviability of realistic depicted heads of snakes allows recall the Scythian animal style. No one can exclude that the Sarata burial had been made just in the Early Scythian time using the vessel preserved as a relic for a long time. If such observations will receive additional arguments the burial no. 13 of the barrow no. 10 near Sarata could be included in the small group of Early Scythian burials of the Steppe zone.

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