14 metal objects, including two silver brooches with half-round plates on heads, a pair of bronze earrings with a solid polygonal terminal, a silver buckle with a half-round frame, a circular brass buckle with an ornamental prong, an oval bronze buckle with a triangular buckle plate, a cast bronze “Byzantine” buckle, a bronze apulla, toiletries: a bronze mirror, two pairs of bronze tweezers, a bronze spoon used for cleaning ears and a fragment of a miniature bronze colander.
Discovery: during the archaeological excavation of the Alano-Gothic cemeteries in the Crimea and the northern Caucasus. The objects are part of the “Crimea-Kerch-Caucasus” collection compiled by Wilhelm Grempler (currently held in the Museum of Archaeology in Wrocław). Some of them were brought by the researcher from his trips to the Crimea and the Caucasus in the 1890s aimed to find traces of the settlement of the eastern Goths. The majority of the objects were bought by a foundation named after him from then its owner, Piotr Mavrogordato, in 1909 and 1910. Those objects came from a cemetery at Gurzuf near Yalta and a large cemetery at Suuk-su located also in Crimea.
These artefacts are dated mainly to the 5th century AD and belong to the typical inventories of the catacomb graves from Alano-Gothic cemeteries established in the mountainous region of the southern Crimea. They were the most intensely used from the 5th to the 7th century AD, and some of them, like Suuk-su, continued in use until the 12th century AD.
Chronology:
the 5th century – the 7th century AD
Museum collection:
the Museum of Archaeology, branch of the City Museum of Wrocław
by P. Madera
