The Golden Deer of Eurasia

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Many of the world's most exciting archaeological discoveries are being made in the central steppes of Eurasia, the vast undulating grasslands that stretch from Hungary to the Pacific. For thousands of years, nomadic tribes sharing strong cultural affinities flourished here, producing artworks of great power and vitality of which the objects illustrated in this book are spectacular examples. The Golden Deer of Eurasia is the catalog of an exhibition jointly organized by the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. It presents objects dating from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. unearthed from burial mounds near Filippovka at the foot of the Ural Mountains. Of the 212 catalog items, two-thirds are recent finds from Filippovka, including gold jewelry, golden plaques showing scenes of animal combat, and gold-plated sculptures of mythological deerlike creatures with predatory muzzles and wide-branching antlers. Other treasures in the exhibition, borrowed from the Hermitage's immensely rich collections of Scythian and related cultures, put the new discoveries in context. The significance of these unique objects is explained in short chapters by American and Russian scholars; subjects range from social customs of the vigorous and violent steppe-peoples to conservation techniques. In addition to objects demonstrating the raw exuberance of the nomads' production, there are exquisite gold drinking vessels that use nomadic decorative themes but were made by Iranian and Greek craftsmen for trade with the tribes--a fascinating example of trade influencing art. As expected from a Met publication, The Golden Deer of Eurasia offers both an art book produced to the highest standards and cutting-edge scholarship on an important and fashionable area of art-historical research. --John Stevenson


Book Description
Recent excavations in Russia have uncovered spectacular and distinctive art objects in silver and gold, created by nomads living in the southern Ural Mountain region during the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. This stunning book explores these unique works of art--including highly ornamental, wooden deerlike creatures overlaid with sheets of gold and silver--and reproduces them in full color alongside related Scythian, Sarmatian, and Siberian objects.This book is the catalogue for an exhibition that opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in October 2000 and runs until February 2001.


From the Inside Flap
The Golden Deer of Eurasia Scythian and Sarmatian Treasures from the Russian SteppesThe State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, and the Archaeological Museum, UfaEdited by Joan Aruz, Ann Farkas, Andrei Alekseev, and Elena KorolkovaSpectacular works of art were excavated between 1986 and 1990 from burial mounds at Filippovka, in Russia, on the border of Europe and Asia. The objects were created from about the fifth to the fourth century b.c. by pastoral people who lived on the steppes near the southern Ural Mountains. The large funerary deposits include wooden, deerlike creatures with predatory mouths and elongated snouts and ears, overlaid with sheets of gold and silver, as well as gold attachments for wooden vessels and gold and silver luxury wares imported from Achaemenid Iran. These treasures are now in the collection of the Museum of Archaeology, Ufa, in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. The discoveries at Filippovka open a new chapter in the history of the material culture of the nomads who in the first millennium b.c. traversed the steppe corridor extending from the Black Sea region to China. Yet the information provided by the Filippovka excavations is complicated and ambiguous. The identity of the people represented by the finds remains uncertain, but the forms and ornamentation of many works from Filippovka, as well as the cemetery's location in the southern Urals, argue for the cultural-chronological designation of this material as Early Sarmatian. Stylistic features, however, point also to the arts of Siberia, Central Asia, and China in the east and to the art of the "Meotian- Scythians" in the west. Imported Achaemenid goods raise questions about their place of production and about the circumstances that brought them to be included in tombs on the southern Ural steppes. Finally, robbers penetrated the burials in antiquity, destroying much of the evidence necessary for understanding the Filippovka nomads' religious and funerary practices.These are among the issues addressed in this volume, the catalogue for an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art that brings together the remarkable new material from Filippovka and, from the incomparably rich collections of the State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg, related luxury objects found in graves of other Eurasian steppe tribes. Gold and silver objects from the Scythian Black Sea tombs; textiles and leather and wooden works from the Altai Mountains; and gold and bronze pieces from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Siberia illustrate developments in the art of the steppes in the centuries preceding the Filippovka burials, in contemporary societies, and in later centuries, toward the turn of the first millennium b.c. These outstanding works not only place the Filippovka discoveries in their proper historical and cultural context but are themselves fascinating and enigmatic.The book is the catalogue for an exhibition that opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in October 2000 and runs until February 2001.


About the Author
Joan Aruz is Acting Associate Curator in Charge in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.Ann Farkas is Professor Emerita in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.Andrei Alekseev is Head and Senior Researcher and Curator in the Department of Archaeology at the State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg.Elena Korolkova is Senior Researcher and Curator in the Department of Archaeology at the State Hermitage, Saint Petersburg.


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Recent excavations in Russia have uncovered spectacular and distinctive art objects in silver and gold, created by nomads living in the southern Ural Mountain region during the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. This stunning book explores these unique works of art—including highly ornamental, wooden deerlike creatures overlaid with sheets of gold and silver—and reproduces them in full color alongside related Scythian, Sarmatian, and Siberian objects.This book is the catalogue for an exhibition that opens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in October 2000 and runs until February 2001.


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