FEMALE COSTUME OF THE EAST GERMANIC TRADITION FEATURING BIG TWO-PLATE BROOCHES IN THE NORTH CAUCASUS IN THE GREAT MIGRATION PERIOD

• Authors: Mastykova Anna
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper addresses the female costume of the East Germanic tradition which was widespread in the North Caucasus throughout the Great Migration period. It was characterised by one or two big two-plate brooches (measuring more than 10 cm in length) worn on the chest or shoulders. Germanic elements, in female costume in particular, spread through the material culture of the North Caucasus in the early stage of the Great Migration period, in the last third of the 4th c. and the first decades of the 5th c. However, the costume featuring big two-plate brooches appeared in the said region, similarly to Europe in general, a bit later, in the second third of the 5th c. Almost all the archaeologically documented cases of the costume in question appearing in the burial context were in the Black Sea coast of the North Caucasus, primarily in the cemetery of Diurso in the vicinity of the present-day Novorossiysk. In the 5th c., the Tetraxitae Goths migrated from the eastern Crimea to the North Caucasus: the Utigur Huns took them when leaving the northern Black Sea area for the east. Outside of the coastal area, the big two-plate brooches and their diminished copies occurred on the sites of the type Pashkovskii – Karpovka which belonged to the proto-Adyghe population of the Kuban. The costume featuring two-plate brooches was certainly considered prestigious at least by the Tetraxitae Goths who created the cemetery of Diurso. The graves containing the attire in question usually featured rather rich grave goods. All the researchers agree that the costume featuring big two-plate brooches on the chest or shoulders was of East Germanic origin. Its prototype existed in the Cherniakhov archaeologic culture. In the Hunnic period, the costume with small two-plate brooches, which were especially widespread in the Cherniakhov culture and the northern Black Sea areas, became the background for the shaping of the ‘princely’ costume with big brooches of similar form. In its own turn, this new prestigious costume became the prototype of the East Germanic attire with big two-plate brooches as a ‘folk’ replica of prestigious East Germanic costume of the Hunnic period. From the second half of the fifth to the early sixth century, this costume was imitated by the East Germanic ‘middle class’ to become widely distributed in the Barbaricum from the North Caucasus to the Pyrenees.

Keywords

EN

NORTH CAUCASUS; GREAT MIGRATION PERIOD; TETRAXITAE GOTHS; FEMALE COSTUME; BROOCHES

• Publisher: Slovak Academy of Sciences, Archaeological Institute
• Journal: Slovenská archeológia (Slovak Archaeology)
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 69
• Issue: suppl 2
• Pages: 363 – 370

Contributors

author

Mastykova Anna

• Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 19 Dmitrii Ul’ianov Str., RU – 117292 Moscow, Russia

• https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7521-5071

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31577/slovarch.2021.suppl.2.34