COSTUME METAL JEWELRY - VOTIVES FOR THE EKLIZI-BURUN SANCTUARY DATING TO THE ROMAN PERIOD(TO THE CULTURAL ATTRIBUTION OF SITE)
Metal jewellery votives discovered at the “barbarian” sanctuary on the Mt. Eklizi- Burun (Crimea) are dated from the 1st to the 3rd centuries AD. Most of these items belong to the female costume known from funerary contexts of Central Crimea, which differ by their localization (Foothills and the Southern seashore), as well as by the peculiarities of burial rite (“inhumation' vs. “cremation). A small part of jewellery is characteristic only for the cemeteries on the Southern shore representing burials with the remains of cremations.An analysis of cultural niches, in which these jewellery items were produced and used, suggests that the adherents of the sanctuary belonged to the societies that lived on the Southern macro-slope of the Main ridge of the Crimean Mountains and practiced cremation of the dead. Apparently, these people got in the Greco-Roman narrative tradition and local epigraphic documents of the Roman period as “Tauri”, “Scythian-Tauri”, and “Tauro-Scythians” inhabiting “Taurica”. Presumably, they appeared in the Mountainous Crimea in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC (migrating from the areas of LaTénoid archaeological cultures?) and maintained their cultural identity until the beginning of the 5th century AD.