Running Animals Belt

c. 1000 BC

Running Animals Belt, c. 1000 BC. Russia or Turkey, Caucasus, Koban culture, early 11th Century BC. Bronze, hammered and incised; overall: 7.6 x 67.6 x 1.2 cm (3 x 26 5/8 x 1/2 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, In honor of Kathleen B. Sherwin 1988.71 The design is one of running and leaping animals "drawn" with an elegance, vigor, and power reminiscent of those cultures who have lived most closely with wild animals and therefore appreciated them best, such as, for one example, the Neolithic cave painters of Lascaux. The animal figures on the belt are not actually drawn, but are punched with an extremely fine punch tool in very carefully planned lines that actually look as though they are drawn. This was a technique used in about 1000 BC. The Scythians arose from nomadic tribes that wandered from the steppes to eastern Europe; the greatest numbers of finds related to them have come from the areas around the Black Sea.