Tamgas and tamga-like signs from Tanais
Sergey Ilyashenko2018, Zeichentragende Artefakte im sakralen Raum
Tamgas and tamga-like signs from Tanais 1 Greeks and Sarmatians in the Northeastern Azov Sea Region The site of Tanais is located on the high main bank of the river Mertvyy Donets, 30 kilometers west of the modern city of Rostov-on-Don (Map 1). In antiquity, it lay on the main arm of the modern river Don (ancient Tanais), near the influx of the river into the Azov Sea (ancient Maeotis). The ancient city of Tanais was one of the most distant points of Greek colonization in the northeast and probably one of the latest settlements established by the Greeks in this region (Map 2). It was founded in the first quarter of the third century BCE and completely abandoned in the middle of the fifth to the beginning of the sixth centuries CE. Written sources and archaeological finds, the earliest of which date to the seventh century BCE, indicate that the Greeks were familiar with the territories adjacent to the Azov Sea. A preserved fragment from Pliny the Elder, which, according to Mikhail Rostovtsev, included information going back to Ionian authors, mentions different stages in the colonization of the area around the mouth of the river Tanais:1 "There is a city also at the mouth of the Tanais. The neighboring country was inhabited first by the Carians, then by the Clazomenii and Maeones, and after them by the Panticapenses" (Historia Naturalis 6.7).2 Look-out points of the Clazomenians, situated on the sea coast, are also mentioned in Strabo's Geographica (11.2.4). Archaeological material too confirms the presence of early Greek settlers in this area. The excavations on the shores of the Taganrog Bay and in the Don delta revealed a series of important ancient sites-settlements and necropoleis. On the basis of the discovered archaeological material, three distinct periods can be identified in the presence of the Greek settlers in the Northeastern Azov Sea region. The first period, from the last decades of the seventh to the third quarter of the sixth centuries BCE, is associated with the Taganrog Settlement, located in the area of the modern beach near the Kamennaya Lestnitsa in Taganrog (Map 2). Presently, the site is submerged, so that its exact localization and size, as well as the characteristics of the cultural layers, are not known. However, archaeological investigations undertaken in the area led archaeologists to the conclusion that a Greek settlement (an emporion?) must have existed here.3
