The Cauldron of Ariantas

In this book, 23 scholars from Ukraine, France, Great Britain, Russia, and Denmark celebrate the 70th birthday of the archaeologist, A.N. Sceglov. Sceglov is one of the pioneers in the investigation and history of ancient Crimea, as well as a widely recognized authority in the studies of northern Black Sea antiquities. The Tarchankut expedition established by Sceglov in 1959 explored a number of sites of the remote chora of Tauric Chersonesos. Panskoe I ranks among the most prominent of them, and Sceglov has devoted more than 30 years of his life to this unique and exceptionally well-preserved Greek settlement. The contributions to this publication shed new light on a vast range of Black Sea issues: from the earliest settlements and their functions to the formation of a Russian science of classical antiquities. In focus are the important Greek cities Histira, Olbia, Chersonesos, and Herakleia Pontike, the cities' material culture and their relationship to their own rural territory and to their non-Greek neighbors. Until now most research in this area has been conducted solely by Russians and published in Russian, but now the rest of the world is able to get a glimpse of the Black Sea area during antiquity. Pia Guldager Bilde is the director of the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre for Black Sea Studies, in Aarhus. Jakob Munk Hte and Vladimir F. Stolba are both researchers at the same center.