{"product_id":"the-golden-deer-of-eurasia","title":"The Golden Deer of Eurasia","description":"\u003cp\u003eSpectacular works of art were excavated between 1986 and 1990 from burial mounds at Filippovka  in Russia  on the border of Europe and Asia. The objects were created from about the fifth to the fourth century b.c. by pastoral people who lived on the steppes near the southern Ural Mountains. The large funerary deposits include wooden  deerlike creatures with predatory mouths and elongated snouts and ears  overlaid with sheets of gold and silver  as well as gold attachments for wooden vessels and gold and silver luxury wares imported from Achaemenid Iran. These treasures are now in the collection of the Museum of Archaeology  Ufa  in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. The discoveries at Filippovka open a new chapter in the history of the material culture of the nomads who in the first millennium b.c. traversed the steppe corridor extending from the Black Sea region to China. Yet the information provided by the Filippovka excavations is complicated and ambiguous. The identity of the people represented by the finds remains uncertain  but the forms and ornamentation of many works from Filippovka  as well as the cemeterys location in the southern Urals  argue for the cultural-chronological designation of this material as Early Sarmatian. Stylistic features  however  point also to the arts of Siberia  Central Asia  and China in the east and to the art of the Meotian-Scythians in the west. Imported Achaemenid goods raise questions about their place of production and about the circumstances that brought them to be included in tombs on the southern Ural steppes. Finally  robbers penetrated the burials in antiquity  destroying much of the evidence necessary for understanding the Filippovka nomads religious and funerary practices. These are among the issues addressed in this volume  the catalogue for an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art that brings together the remarkable new material from Filippovka and  from the incomparably rich collections of the State Hermitage  Saint Petersburg  related luxury objects found in graves of other Eurasian steppe tribes. Gold and silver objects from the Scythian Black Sea tombs; textiles and leather and wooden works from the Altai Mountains; and gold and bronze pieces from the Caucasus  Central Asia  and Siberia illustrate developments in the art of the steppes in the centuries preceding the Filippovka burials  in contemporary societies  and in later centuries  toward the turn of the first millennium b.c. These outstanding works not only place the Filippovka discoveries in their proper historical and cultural context but are themselves fascinating and enigmatic.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44986960445493,"sku":"ByrdShop_0300085109","price":226.16,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780300085105.jpg?v=1770921793","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-golden-deer-of-eurasia","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}