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In 19th-century southern Russia, extraordinarily rich early Scythian tombs (6th-7th c. B.C.) were discovered containing large golden deer. In one burial mound in the village of Kostromskaya, a figure of a deer supposedly lay on an iron shield. Researchers therefore drew the conclusion that the deer were shield ornaments, a view that was generally accepted up until only recently. Not long ago, however, Alekseev (1996), having analyzed the history and documentation of the earlier digs, made it clear that neither the deer, nor a golden panther that had also been found there were shield ornaments. He concluded that they are far more likely to have been decorations for the gorytos (bow and arrow case). It must be noted here, however, that the possibility that the Scythian golden deer were also gorytos ornaments was mentioned as early as 1934 in a book by Nándor Fettich, a noted Hungarian archeologist and goldsmith.
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The Benedictine monastery of Pannonhalma in Northwestern Hungary was built in the 11th century on a small hill called Sacer Mons (Sacred Mountain). In the present study, I research the origin of this name. There is no such concept as "sacred mountain" in the Christian religion (peaks might be named for Christian saints, for example Mons Sacri Martini). However, the name Mons Sacer for the hill under discussion turns up as early as the 11th century. For this reason, it seems improbable that it took this name shortly after the foundation of the monastery because of the monks living there. The documents—which luckily survive in large numbers—and also the narrative sources tell us that the name Mons Sacer had no connection with the Benedictine monastery at first; it was the name of the hill itself. This naming cannot be tied to the Christian religion; it derives from the times when Hungarians still preserved their original native religion. The qualification of a mountain as "sacred" has many parallels in the Eurasian mountains where nomads once lived. The survival of this tradition in the Hungary of the 11th century is shown by the fact that King St. László I called a diet (at the Benedictine monastery) on Mons Sacer, and that a few years later King Kálmán summoned the Hungarian nobles to the Tarcal Hill in Eastern Hungary for the same purpose. This means that certain hills and peaks still preserved their pre-Christian cultic function as gathering places in the early Árpád era. The location of the first Benedictine monastery in the Kingdom of Hungary might have been selected merely to neutralize an ancient cultic place.
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It was likely in early 1926 that Ernő P. Ábrahám's A csudaszarvas (That Wondrous Deer), an overview of Hungarian history for young readers, was published in Budapest. It starts with early Hungarian history (more precisely Hunnic-Hungarian history) and takes us all the way up to the situation after World War I. It is illustrated with Romantic tableaux that depict spectacular scenes witnessed by a young prince named Árva (a name which means "orphan"), who is whisked from one part to the next by his magic steed Tüzes (meaning "fiery"). The mythical csodaszarvas, or wonder deer, appears in several scenes, but it is signified in the book with the more folksy form csudaszarvas (roughly, "that wondrous deer"). The book is very richly decorated, with embellishments, initials and full-page illustrations that portray key scenes from Hungarian history. These were produced in the studio of a contemporary graphic artist, the multi-faceted and renowned Álmos Jaschik. And one of the age's most prominent Hungarian politicians, Albert Apponyi, wrote the foreword to the book. On carefully surveying this foreword as well as the body of the work and the illustrations, one discovers that the book serves a legitimist goal and that it was created for a "boy who lives far away," who received the first, hand-painted copy. This boy was actually the son of the last Habsburg king of Hungary, Charles IV, who had by then died; the heir presumptive to the throne was Prince Otto. The article discusses the multi-layered and informative writing and iconography of the book as well as the author and the designer of the illustrations. A detailed study of both text and images brings out the several phases that went into planning and making the volume. Incidentally, the csudaszarvas variant in the title is well established in Hungarian literature and art. Interestingly, however, it is unknown among latter-day readers. It is revealing that the wonder deer not only shows the way to a new homeland, but also plays a role in the story of the founding of the church at Vác and brings the hero of the book all the way to the modern age. A discussion of the many-sided text and of points about content and iconography is useful insofar as it reveals well-known stereotypes about both early and later Hungarian history.
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The color of wine has crucial importance in relation to the quality of wine. Laboratory parameters of color are supervised by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), and is intensity I and tonality T. It is also found that the subjective visual impression of the consumer is an important in the first step in his purchase. Consumer research survey, conducted in Australia in 2005–2007 on the 1643 wines, shows that red wines with greater color intensity are characterized by a higher class market. Color of the wine depends on many factors: the variety of grape, their ripeness, the winemaking processes, and age of wine. In the case of red wine, its color is given by anthocyanins, whose chemical properties are presented: their copigmanted complexes, also uncoloured cofactors capable to specific interactions and color changes in the environment of varying acidity of wine. That phenomenons are independent on time and were presented in ancient Greek wine like also all users of wine today, which is directly bind with tradition. Maybe the most different is mode and necessity of wines description. Knowledge about the nuances of color tonality, perception of wine and its origin is part of the oenological visual organoleptic analysis. The color perception is subjective and individual, and depends directly on the light conditions, but also of education, cultural background, experience, emotional state. Analysis of visual color of the wine contains the skills of perception, discernment and naming. These abilities can be educated and improved through education.
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This is a chapter of the Interslavic reader which is a collection of working texts for teaching the Interslavic language. / Tuto jest kapitola iz čitateljnika, ktory jest spisok tekstov do učenja medžuslovjanskogo jezyka.
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The aim of the present article is to reconstruct the ancient kitchen space according to the recipes given in the Latin cookbook known as De re coquinaria (4th century A.D.), the agricultural work De agricultura by Cato the Elder (3rd/2nd century B.C.) and Greek medical treatises by Galen (2nd/3rd century A.D.) and Oribasius (4th century A.D.). On their basis the author describes the most important kitchen utensils and the way they were used. Moreover, she characterises the most common thermal treatments utilized in culinary art of that time.
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Three plastic terracotta lamps of Hellenistic period have been published and discussed in this article. They were discovered at three different cult pits during excavation of the ancient Thracian pit sanctuary, located near Byala, Varna Region, Bulgaria. It is situated on Sveti Atanas Cape and was in function during 6th —1st centuries BC, or maybe a bit later.All three lamps are shaped as Negroid heads. The first one is made of brownish clay and is preserved intact. It is dated to the 3rd century BC and is possibly of Attic origin. It finds parallels among the finds of the second half of the 3rd century BC from Seuthopolis — the capital of the Thracian Kingdom of 4th —3rd centuries BC. The other two lamps are also shaped as Negroid heads, but fragmented and belong to another type. A lamp of the same shape was found in Burgas, again on the Western Black Sea coast. Based on similar finds from other regions of the Ancient world, both lamps from Byala have been dated to the 1st century BC. The author supposes that they are of Asia Minor origin and possibly products of Cnidus’s workshops.Based on the finds in the pits, it was established that this cult center was used, by no doubts, by the locals: Thracians and Greeks who lived around the cape in the vicinity, and in the ancient towns on the coastline. It was visited permanently also by a number of ancient sailors of various ethnic origin, who stopped there to make their offerings to the gods when sailing along the Western Black Sea coast in northern and southern directions. The three lamps were deposited probably as votive offerings by ancient sailors, who deliberately stopped at the sanctuary on Sveti Atanas Cape. Here, they were able to make their ritual offerings to thank the (sea?) gods for saving their lives during that sailing or for a safe return home.
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The author examines a kiln for household ceramics, which was discovered on Sveti Atanas cape in Byala, Varna region, Bulgaria. The ceramic kiln was cleared in the horizon under the street (dated to the end of the 6th century), which was also traced in previous archaeological seasons. The kiln relates to a double-chamber structure with a vertical rod.The upper layer of the lower chamber contained a large number of fragments of tiles and pithoi among the burnt pieces of clay and ash. Many sherds of household ceramics were found under this layer. Inside the kiln chamber, at the bottom, in the layer of ash and coal, there was one whole bowl, fragments of several deformed bowls and a whole pot. To the west of the kiln entrance, a rounded pit was excavated. A large number of fragmented ceramics (with manufacturing defects) was discovered. Three bowls are restored. At the level of the broken grid, a strongly burnt chimney was found, which was probably reused with respect to the grid construction.A completely preserved and well-burned vessel in the shape of a cone was found in the lower chamber of the kiln. Fragments of a dozen other similar, but coarse and poorly burned conical vessels (restored four), were also found in the pit at the entrance in front of the furnace. There are several hypotheses about the use of such vessels/cones: used in ancient gardening; as polyfunctional funnels; to build a domed construction of kilns or in building construction.The oven and ceramics date from approximately the second half of the 2nd century — mid 50s of the 3rd century, and are evidence of a new provincial pottery production center of the Roman period in the Western Black Sea region.
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The study was conducted to establish the fact and dating of the joint rule of Rhadamsades and Rhescuporis V. The inscription of CIRB 66 and the coins of these sovereigns became objects of this study. We believe that Rhescuporis V was co-regent of Rhadamsades since his assumption of power. Moreover, these sovereigns were not originally equal, judging by the fact that in the first years of their joint rule, only Rhadamsades had the right to emit money. Rhescuporis V received the right to mint his coins after winning a war with external enemies. Rhadamsades and Rhescuporis V jointly ruled the Kingdom of Bosporus until the former’s death.
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Fragmented painted pottery is uncovered predominately in the layer and structures of the Cernavodă I culture (the 2nd quarter of the 4th mill. BC). Part of fragments derives from complexes of the Early Iron Age cut into the late Eneolithic layer or is represented by stray finds. According to technological traits the pottery corresponds to painted ceramics of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. Several morphological types can be distinguished: cylindrical-conical bowls, relatively large pots with conical or cylindrical neck, jugs with high cylindrical neck, small widely open pots with globular body and small amphora with vertical handles on shoulders. The painting consists of two main kinds. The first kind embraces geometric or curvilinear ornaments composed from broad crossing or complementary bands which find best parallels mainly in the ornamentation of the Cucuteni B2-Tripolye C1 pottery. The second kind of the painting includes net-like ornament or compositions made of narrow crossing diagonal bands (“sparse net”). This kind of painted design is related only to the small vessels with globular body and amphora. Such morphological and stylistic types can be considered as manifestations of particular ceramic tradition of the Cernavodă I culture probably emerged under influence of the Cucuteni B-Tripolye C1 culture. They are broadly distributed in late Eneolithic graves of the Northwest Pontic region and can be regarded as additional evidence for attributing this territory to the area of the late Eneolithic Cernavodă I culture.
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The grave goods contained in the main burial complex of Zintseva Balka 2/17 (North-Eastern Azov Sea Region), a Pit Grave Cultural and Historical Community site, were very expressive, including a damaged flint biface and a stylized sandstone figurine, which was morphologically similar to the stele from the Early Bronze Age barrows. Analysis of existing analogies showed that use of small stylized stone sculptures, often in combination with cutting tools, was a part of the funerary rite of the cattle-breeding population of the steppe zone of the Early and Middle Bronze Age, reflecting its ideological representations. Presence of such figurines in graves may indicate a special social and/or sacral status of the buried.
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The article deals with the results of studies of the Bronze Age barrows by the Krasnoznamenskaya expedition in the Lower Dnieper region in 1991. Data about 53 burials of Pit Graves cultural-historical community (36), Catacomb Graves cultures (10), Babino culture (2), and the Berezhnovka-Maiovka Srubnaya Graves culture (5) are published here. There are many children's graves among the burials of the Pit Grave culture. The Late Tripolye influences were noted in the funerary rite of the Pit Graves population. Complexes of the Ingul Catacomb culture are the most interesting. The praying pose, as well as the pose typical for the Pit Graves burials (as another evidence of the simultaneous existence of the Pit Graves and the Ingul population), a batch internment, a rare ritual bowl of rectangular shape, sling stones, and a stone ax-hammer were found. Ordinary graves predominate in all cultures.
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The article publishes a set of bronze items from the Novocherkassk hoard found in 1939 in the basin of the Lower Don. This hoard is one of the main archaeological complexes, which served as the basis for chronology of the pre-Scythian period. The finds are examined against a broad background of analogies related to the characteristic articles of the North Caucasus production centers in the second half of the 8th — the first half of the 7th cc. BC.
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The paper aims to survey current systematizing developments for the osseous industries dated back to the 6th—2nd centuries BC in the Northwest Pontic area. These trends, however, appear to be applicable to any of the many worked-bone-containing parts in the whole archaeological oecumene. The readers are introduced to the classificatory concepts which only have been explicated in parts elsewhere. Basically, the North Pontic archaeologists definitely used to seek their worked bone archaeological record to be completely imposed into classification. Yet any kind of such classifications normally contains impermeable inherent limits set up by the researchers themselves, who usually face a scarcity of comprehensive expert data. Here, some special solutions to the problem are put forward based on systemic classificatory approach. The approach refers to the osseous raw material structures and the ways they have been transformed during manufacture. The technoclasses concept of adapting, modifying, and converting bone and antler during utilization goes back, in particular, to Andrei Borodovskiy’s technological systematics. The traceological studies, in turn, tend to embed all identifiable objects into a system, since many more different means of functional analysis would work as verifying methods. At the same time, the artefacts’ technical functions and the manners they were used are the issues of special research concern. Further, the ways past equipment including instruments, implements, and accessories might have affected on or interacted with objects and substances, resulted in rational shapes and use-wear patterns in artefacts. The entities of tools, devices, joints, furniture, andparaphernalia seem to be quite perceptive to the variability in worked bone and antler record. This kind of arrangement may have been flexibly changed in terms of its units and even sections hierarchy, whereas its principal ideas are here to stay with no need them to be rearranged.
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The division between the dimensional groups of blade weapons is conditional and, probably, the boundary between them can vary from one epoch to another. The analysis of variation series of such features as “total length” and “blade length” showed the heterogeneity of the sample (more than 800 ex.) and the existence of several functional standards. Five groups were distinguished: daggers (with a blade length of up to 21 cm), short swords (21—37 cm), medium swords (38—53 cm), long swords (54—75 cm) and extra-long swords (with a blade length in excess of 75 cm). Mapping of spearheads and axes also made it possible to reveal some regularities. It became obvious that it is possible to build a typological grouping of regions on the basis of the contents of weaponry and move from small cultural groups to cultural blocks, enclaves, communities of people who preferred similar types of weapons. The counting of the degree of similarity by the method of classification by unequal features demonstrated several such enclaves: “Carpathian” one, where the greatest degree of similarity was manifested between Western Podolian, Transylvanian and Moldavian groups. The main types for this enclave are a dagger or a short sword and an axe. The next, “Steppe” block includes the Lower Danube, Lower Dniester, South Carpathian and South Danubian groups, in which the spearheads and medium or long swords are widely distributed. The third, “Western” block united the Hungarian and Polish groups, for which the axes and spearheads are more characteristic.
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In 2017, barrow 116 of the Scythian cemetery of the 3rd—2nd centuries BC near Glinoe village, Slobodzeya district, on the left bank of the Lower Dniester Region was investigated. Two burials in the catacombs were studied under the mound, surrounded by a ring ditch with two ruptures. A paired children's burial was made in the northern burial chamber of the main grave 116/1, accompanied by an unusual inventory — a three-tiered torque, a pair of gold earrings, a silver multi-turned bracelet, two belt buckles with images of men's faces, a bronze mirror with an iron handle in a sheath, two conical and two flat trapezoidal pendants, as well as a bunch of composite adornments from beads. Wooden coffin was built to bury a man — a noble warrior in the eastern burial chamber of this catacomb. Three fibulae were found on the skeleton in addition to a representative set of weapons, adornments and a hand-made bowl. Also a warrior was buried in the secondary grave 116/2, a pair of long fighting knives lay near the body. Barrow 116 dates back to the third quarter of the 3rd century BC on the basis of the fibulae of the Early La-Tene construction and fragments of Heraclean amphora from the ditch.
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The article is dedicated to the publication of Hellenistic burial complex investigated on the territory of Ak-Kaya necropolis in 2015. There were 4 burials and 2nd—1st cc. BC diverse implements investigated in underground catacomb. Most interesting was a big oval Celtic type schield with numerous iron components — the first such find in Nortern Black sea region. There its detailed description and reconstruction, analogies and similar finds from the territory of Bosporan Kingdom and Chersonesos in the article.
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