In 1882, the lavishly decorated golden regalia of a steppe nomad warrior prince, which was crafted in the late sixth century BCE in a “bilingual” Scythian–Milesian workshop on the Black Sea coast, was found on the edge of a Lusatian swamp 120 km southeast of Berlin. Its discovery and the ongoing findings of steppe nomad armaments—arrows, battle axes, and swords—in central Europe have led to a lively debate about the nature of Scythian–Indigenous interaction in the Early Iron Age, ranging from benign visions of long-term acculturation to violent scenarios of short-term raiding. In this article, I argue that an analysis of the iconography of the Witaszkowo hoard and new information from excavations at its find spot make it likely that it was sent as a diplomatic gift by Scythian elites to an indigenous leader and deposited by the local community as a votive hoard. An affirmation of the compact chronological range of Scythian artefacts found in the west, growing evidence for the destruction of indigenous strongholds by horse-borne archers, and concurrent evidence for the drastic depopulation of vast landscapes in the second half of the sixth century BCE allow us to envisage the gifting of this hoard as an episode of a fierce and destructive altercation. It is posited that this onslaught was a facet of the western thrust of the Lydian and Persian Empires, and that its extirpative impact was the result of systematic, commercially driven slaving triggered by the concurrent monetisation of the economies of the Black Sea coast. The effects of these raids on Eastern Central Europe’s later prehistoric communities are made manifest by analogies to the disastrous ramifications of the transatlantic slave trade on societies of 16th-to-18th-century West Africa.

中文翻译：

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暴力袭击、系统性奴役和大规模人口减少？通过维塔什科沃/维特斯菲尔德宝藏的视角重新评估斯基泰人对中欧的影响

1882 年，在距离 120 公里的卢萨蒂亚沼泽边缘发现了装饰华丽的草原游牧武士王子的金色王冠，该王冠是公元前 6 世纪末在黑海沿岸的斯基泰-米利都“双语”作坊中制作的。柏林东南部。它的发现以及中欧草原游牧民族武器（箭、战斧和剑）的不断发现，引发了关于铁器时代早期斯基泰人与土著互动本质的激烈争论，从长期的良性愿景适应短期袭击的暴力场景。在本文中，我认为，对维塔什科沃宝藏的图像分析以及在其发现地点挖掘的新信息表明，它很可能是斯基泰精英作为外交礼物送给一位土著领导人，并由当地社区存放为还愿的宝藏 对西方发现的斯基泰文物按时间顺序排列的确认，越来越多的证据表明马弓箭手摧毁了土著据点，同时有证据表明公元前六世纪下半叶大片地区的人口急剧减少，这使我们能够将这批宝藏的赠予想象成一场激烈和破坏性争吵的一个插曲。有人认为，这次袭击是吕底亚帝国和波斯帝国向西推进的一个方面，其毁灭性影响是黑海沿岸经济同时货币化引发的系统性、商业驱动的奴隶制的结果。这些袭击对东中欧后来的史前社会的影响可以通过类比跨大西洋奴隶贸易对 16 至 18 世纪西非社会的灾难性影响来体现。