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Start giftingThe Scythians
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Learn moreThe Scythians were nomadic horsemen who ranged wide across the grasslands of the Asian steppe from the Altai mountains in the east to the Great Hungarian Plain in the first millennium BC. Their steppe homeland bordered on a number of sedentary states to the south and there were, inevitably, numerous interactions between the nomads and their neighbours. The Scythians fought the Persians on a number of occasions, in one battle killing their king and on another occasion driving the invading army of Darius the Great from the steppe.
Relations with the Greeks around the shores of the Black Sea were rather different—both communities benefiting from trading with each other. It is from the writings of Greeks like the historian Herodotus that we learn of Scythian life: their beliefs, their burial practices, their love of fighting, and their ambivalent attitudes to gender. It is a world that is also brilliantly illuminated by the rich material culture recovered from Scythian burials, where all the organic material is amazingly well preserved.
Barry Cunliffe here marshals this vast array of evidence—both archaeological and textual—in a masterful reconstruction of the lost world of the Scythians, allowing them to emerge in all their considerable vigour and splendour for the first time in over two millennia.
Barry Cunliffe taught archaeology at the Universities of Bristol and Southampton and was professor of European archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2008, thereafter becoming Emeritus Professor. He has excavated widely in Britain (Fishbourne, Bath, Danebury, Hengistbury Head, Brading) and in the Channel Islands, Brittany, and Spain, and has been president of the Council for British Archaeology and of the Society of Antiquaries, Governor of the Museum of London, a Commissioner of English Heritage, and a Trustee of the British Museum. His many books include Facing the Ocean, Druids: A Very Short Introduction, Britain Begins, By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean, and On the Ocean, all published by Oxford University Press. He received a knighthood in 2006.
Matthew Waterson was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Britain. After finishing his BA at Tufts University in Boston, graduate study at LAMDA in London, and eight years in New York, he returned to LA. He has been fortunate enough to narrate books on subjects as varied as the history of South Africa, the current state of FIFA, and mysteries and dramas. He can also be heard on many video games, the Netflix series Trollhunters, and on the radio for companies such as Twinings Tea and Frank's Red Hot Sauce.