как хочется в крым. ну хоть почитать

Andrási, Júlia. <i>The Berthier-Delagarde Collection of Crimean
Jewellery in the British Museum and Related Material, with
contributions by Aleksander Aibabin and a scientific report by Susan
La Niece and Michael Cowell, edited by D. Kidd and B. Ager</i>. The
British Museum Research Publication no. 166. London: The British
Museum Press, 2008. Pp. 174. $60. ISBN 978-0-86159-166-4.

Reviewed by Alexandru Madgearu
The Institute for Defense Studies and Military History,
Bucharest, Romania
amadgearu@yahoo.com
The Medieval Review" <tmrl@indiana.edu>:

Crimea is one of the most fascinating regions for archaeologists. Its
position between the Eurasian Steppe and the Black Sea area connected
and melted various cultural elements of different origins. Here,
sedentary societies entered in violent or peaceful relations with
nomads since the age of Greek colonization to the Late Middle Ages.
Linked to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, this peninsula was both an
extension of the steppe and the northernmost outpost of the
Mediterranean urban civilization. One of the consequences of this
interaction between the two worlds during Late Antiquity and Early
Middle Ages was the production of various metalwork objects for
barbarian clients in Crimean workshops. In this place of crossroads,
fashion became a mixture of Byzantine and barbarian styles, expressed
in bronze, silver or gold objects like belt buckles, fibulae,
jewellery or harness pieces. The cities of Cherson and Bosporos
produced, for example, types of buckles or fibulae worn by barbarians
from the fifth to the seventh centuries. [1] It has also been shown
that a type of cheek-piece used by the Huns was produced in the
Bosporan workshops. [2]

This book provides new and important evidence in this respect, because
it presents a significant and diverse number of pieces discovered in
Crimea, gathered in the last decades of the nineteenth century by a
Russian collector, the military engineer Alexander Berthier-Delagarde,
and preserved in the British Museum since 1923. It is smaller than the
similar collection assembled from Crimean acquisitions between 1905
and 1915 by Johannes von Diergardt [3], but it does contribute to a
better knowledge of the metalwork produced between the fourth and
seventh centuries in these workshops. The editor Júlia Andrási has
already published a preliminary study on this collection. [4]

The first chapter, written by the foremost Crimean archaeologist
Aleksander Aibabin, presents the geographical background (so important
for this land), and a short history of Crimea, between the seventh
century BC and the thirteenth century AD, that focuses on ethnic
changes (1-7). The same chapter includes some brief data on the
gathering of the collection, a summary of previous research about the
early medieval Crimean workshops, and some data on the chronology of
the cemeteries that provided material similar to that gathered in this
collection (8-9).

The British Museum purchased only less than half of the collection
offered in 1923, other objects (mostly Greek and Early Roman) being
sold elsewhere. Photos made by Berthier-Delagarde during the
excavations were discovered in the Ukranian archives, but the original
catalogue was not retrieved during the documentation work carried out
by Andrási. The second chapter (11-31) tries to reconstitute the
contents of the entire collection through comparison with the extant
old photos.

The catalogue is divided into three parts. The largest and most
important for archaeological research includes artefacts from the
fourth to the seventh century AD (33-114). Appendix 1 publishes Early
Roman jewellery (115-131), while Appendix 2 is dedicated to some
miscellaneous Greek Age and Late Medieval objects (132-140). Every
object is illustrated in plates at the end of each section. The
description of the objects (earrings, pendants, brooches, armrings,
buckles, harness pieces) is very detailed, and in many cases analogies
with bibliography are provided. Of special interest are the plates
that display the deconstruction into parts of some types of brooches,
buckles, belt strap ends and harness fittings (Plates 9, 15-18, 27,
33, 35, 47, 48). Such technological aspects are seldom addressed in
the archaeological literature. In this case it was easy to present
such material, because the objects are completely preserved.

The book continues with another study by A. Aibabin providing a
commentary on the most important pieces in the collection, in
chronological order (141-149). The first group of objects is of
Sarmatian and Alan origin. Aibabin emphasizes that the harness
fittings from the collection provide evidence for the existence of an
early polychrome style used by the Alans since the second half of the
third century AD. This polychrome style was specific especially for
the Hunnic period, well represented in the Berthier-Delagarde
collection. For the sixth and seventh centuries, the collection
includes interesting buckles and radiate-headed and eagle-headed
brooches, whose chronology is discussed by Aibabin. He concludes that
the various pieces preserved in this collection, some of them imported
from the Ostrogothic and Gepidic lands, illustrate not only the
evolution of crafts in this region, but also contacts between
craftsmen from Crimea and Central Europe.

The last chapter, written by Susan La Niece and Michael Cowell (151-
160), is a metallographic and technological study of the objects. They
determined the composition of the gold, silver and copper alloys, and
analysed the techniques used for composite golden or silver jewels
with inlay (gems or glass).

In conclusion, the careful work carried on by J. Andrási with the help
of her colleagues provides a new and useful research instrument for
archaeologists specializing in the Early Middle Ages, not only for the
Black Sea area, but also for other European regions.