Re: Some Yatsenko texts

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:

>
> --- On Wed, 8/12/09, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- In cybalist@... s.com, george knysh <gknysh@> wrote:
> >
> > Here are the main conclusions in S. Yatsenko's article about 
> > Sarmatian gakks on Germanic spearheads.
> >
> > He notes that so far 12 such spearheads (with 23 distinct
> > markers/gakks) have been found: 7 in Poland, 2 in Germany, 2 in
> > Ukraine, 1 in Norway. The Polish and Ukrainian finds are all from
> > the Przeworsk culture area. All spearheads were made and
> > inscribed in the period ca.150-250 CE.
>
> >
> > NB: Yatsenko follows Baran in attributing the spearheads to the
> > Goths. I don't think this is the case, since none were found in
> > the Wielbark area. At best they could be spearheads of those
> > Vandals who collaborated in the Gothic invasion of Ukraine in
> > the 230's.
> > But the timeline also allows them to be associated with the
> > Vandal assault on the Costoboci in Galicia in 172 CE.
> >
>
> That timeline doesn't allow for
> 1) the sites Yatsenko lets occupy a special place in Valle, Norway and Bodzhanovo, Lower Vistula, since spearheads found there have the gakk of king Farsoi (45 - 70)
>
> ****GK: Yatsenko argues that the spearheads could not have been made earlier than 150 CE. Perhaps the evidence for this is available in the full printed article. But this is an important point for him. He doesn't say much online about Valle, but he does mention that the Bodzhanovo spearhead is from a burial which he dates as of the 150-250 CE period. He claims that only 4 of the 23 discovered gakks on these spearheads can be shown to have been still operative among Sarmatians in 150-250, and this leads him to conclude that 19 of the 23 belonged to extinct clans as of 150. Including the gakk of Farzoi. Some new dynasty would have become "Spalian" kings of Scythia as a result of deadly conflict between incomers and Farzoi's descendants. That is why he is saying that the Farzoi gakk is an "inheritance" value by 150. And he insists that the dating of the actual object proves his point, i.e. there was certainly a Farzoi gakk in the 50's and 60's (it is found
> on other objects) but it did not then exist on Germanic spearheads. It seems possible, however, to argue that the presence of the Valle spearhead does not prove 100% that Farzoi had diplomatic relations there. It could have been brought there by a migrant. The Przeworsk (Vandalic) connection seems to be the best bet (so far). And if he is right about the time of these spearheads' manufacture the events I mentioned are good candidates for "important occurrences" (of course it could have been something else: after all 100 years is a long time.****
>
> , nor
> 2) those at Porogi on the middle Dniestr with the gakk of his successor Inismei (70 - 85),
>
> ****GK: This is different from the spearhead evidence. The gakked items at Porogi (including a beautiful jewel incrusted poniard) are in a 1rst c. CE Aorsan burial, and thus contemporary to Inismei.*****
>
>
> nor
> 3) those in the Kashava Drahana barrow in C^atalka, Bulgaria, which contained gakks of both kings,
>
> *****GK: But the barrow is also 1rst c. CE acc. to Shchukin's various possibilities.*****
>
> nor
> 4) presumably the one in Vize, Turkey, which is generally considered contemporaneous with it, nor
> 5) the kingly grave in Mus^ov of the middle early Imperial period, B2 (if that marking on the type III spearhead really is a gakk),
>
> ****GK: B2 would be 80-150 CE? I've re-examined your upload of type III on the basis of my newly acquired gakk-reading expertise (:=)) and compared the signs to those in the Yatsenko article. There are most definitely three gakks there, distinct yet closely related. What is even more interesting is that they are most certainly of the Farzoi family type! Not Farzoi's own but very close. The Farzoi gakk was a straight line topped by a simple half moon on one side and an inverted half moon on the bottom side. The Mushov gakks are all variants of this: one is in the form of a cross which is actually a Farzoi marker crossed with another Farzoi marker. Another is like a Farzoi marker broken in half with the two pieces rejoined at right angle at the middle. The third is also a broken up Farzoi type with the pieces connected by a straight line at the middle. Apart from this, the spearhead has a number of circular lunar or solar signs, which to Yatsenko would
> indicate that it is Germanic. If the dating of the grave is as
> above, it is possible that these gakks belonged to a successor of
> Inismei (Farzoi's royal clan seems to have ruled until the mid-2nd
> c.CE. But other interpretations are also possible (Farzoi's
> brother? or some other relative?.*****
>
>
>
>
> compared by Pes^ka and Tejral to the ones in C^atalka and Vize.
>
> ****GK: Any gakks in Vize?****
>
>
> They all belong to a much earlier period and it is tempting to
> connect them with the activities of those kings. The text leading
> up to and note 60) itself in
> Jan Lichardus
> Inhumation funerals of the early Imperial period in the area of the
> southern Elbe Germani
> http://tech. groups.yahoo. com/group/ cybalist/ message/64383
> makes it tempting to include the sites mentioned there.
>

from
http://tinyurl.com/lm3p4x
(among much other intersting stuff)

21. Jatsenko, Sergej (Moscow) Methodological Problems in the Study of
the Tamga–Nishan Signs of the Sarmatian Nomadic Clans

'The ethnological material on the North Caucasian peoples serves as a
reliable basis for the Sarmatian tamga signs (gakk in Ossetian) study
(as the forms analogous to them, methods and instruments used for
branding domestic animals were preserved in this region up to the
20th c.). The mechanisms of long preservation of certain
property-sign types in one ethnos and borrowing of it by neighbors,
the specificity of social (clan and family) character explain many
peculiarities of their much earlier use in Sarmatia. There are no
serious arguments in favor of tamga-nishan signs origin for Iranian
peoples based on "the theory of magic" (M. Ebert, 1909) and "the
theory of a written language" (P. Burchakov, 1875). Mapping of
items with tamgas and eliciting the local specificity of their types
are of principal importance. Sign accumulations on different items
are usually connected with the procedure of collective vows, the
signs of people from different neighboring regions being often met on
them as well. Nomadic clans whose tamgas are repeatedly presented in
sign accumulations in different regions can be considered most active
politically. Their symbols were usually used for a short period of
time as nomadic clans in Sarmatia disappeared rapidly in the
condition of military and ethnopolitical instability of that time.
Sign pairs, presenting, according to the ethnological data, a symbol
of a joint action of two clans play a very important role. Some
artifacts which usually belonged to grown-up women (bronze caldrons,
mirrors-pendants) reveal the directions of marriage unions. The magic
meaning of tamgas was the least one; tamgas were a visual symbol of a
collective vow to gods or the first master's power over the thing. It
was evident in the cases of disinclination to cover this or that sign
with a later one in accumulations or in rare occasions of proper
rebranding of a single sign with a new one on expensive prestigious
things taken by strangers.

The fact of Sarmatian tamgas being used by many kings of the
Greek-Barbarian Bosporan Kingdom is of great significance, the
methods of using them being the same as Iranian ones. Clan and family
members branded even the items of one type (coins, official
inscriptions concerning building) not in each case and it seems
impossible to clear up many details of this process.

Many problems can be appreciated adequately only in case of complex
investigation of all the data in the bounds of the vast Iranian
world. The accumulations of tamga signs in sacral complexes of
Western Turkestan (Sidak, Bayte, Takht-i Sangin) and South Siberia
(Salbyk) have an important role at that. Sarmatian signs have a
number of differences if compared with Iranian ones or those in
Western Turkestan: here, on bricks and belt buckles of award the
tamgas of kings (the Bosporan Kingdom) can be depicted, but there
are neither images of pilgrims from different regions on the series
of votive items with single sings nor tamgas on dice (as in Sidak).

Precise copying of signs (many of them being fragmental or
obliterated by age) and differentiating of ancient tamgas from later
ones (made by people of another cultural tradition) in cultic centers
of long usage present serious problems.'


Torsten