The Pectoral from Kosika and the Origin of the Scenes of Animal Combat in Graeco-Scythian Goldwork

Abstract

This article concerns a gold pectoral found in burial No. 1/1984 in Kosika in the Lower Volga area. The destroyed burial was dated by us to the third quarter of the 1st century BC. Based on visual examination of the pectoral in 2015, an attempt is made to re-establish its history: to determine when it was created – no later than the first half of the 5th century BC – and when it was repaired and re-worked at the end of the 5th century or during the first third of the 4th century BC and also to explain how this unique object of Scythian culture of the North Pontic area, insignia of royal power and one of the earliest works depicting scenes of animal combat, appearing at the very beginning of the Graeco-Scythian style in toreutics, found its way into a far later burial (at least 300 years after it had been re-worked), that of a representative of the highest Sarmatian élite.