A spectral cavalcade: Early Iron Age horse sacrifice at a royal tomb in southern Siberia
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Horses began to feature prominently in funerary contexts in southern Siberia in the mid-second millennium BC, yet little is known about the use of these animals prior to the emergence of vibrant horse-riding groups in the first millennium BC. Here, the authors present the results of excavations at the late-ninth-century BC tomb of Tunnug 1 in Tuva, where the deposition of the remains of at least 18 horses and one human is reminiscent of sacrificial spectral riders described in fifth-century Scythian funerary rituals by Herodotus. The discovery of items of tack further reveals connections to the earliest horse cultures of Mongolia.
During the first millennium BC, the radiation of horse-mounted groups out of the inner Asian steppes dramatically rewrote the cultural and political landscape of Eurasia. From Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean, early historic records chronicle interactions with these steppe cultures (Parzinger Reference Parzinger 2004). Greek authors, such as Herodotus, elaborated upon aspects of the economy and culture of ‘Scythians’ at the margins of the Pontic-Caspian steppe and archaeologists are increasingly able to draw parallels between the historical Scythians and the first millennium horse cultures of the Altai and southern Siberia, half a continent away. Over time, the term Scythian has come to refer to a broader cultural and archaeological phenomenon loosely defined through the association of horse gear, weapons and items decorated animal style.
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