“Leskov’s Maikop Treasure is not just a beautifully compiled catalogue of a significant group of items from various periods offering a study of Northern Caucasian art but also the successful attempt of an experienced scientist to compile in a few pages the history and context of a culture little known so far to international scholarship.

The author, Aleksandr M. Leskov, is a Research Associate in the Program for the Archaeology of Ukraine, University of Pennsylvania. His field of specialty is the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age of Eastern Europe. He has led several expeditions to the south of Ukraine and to the Northern Caucasus. Previously, he was also appointed Head of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Art at the Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow.

What makes a publication of the Maikop treasure so important, even to scholars with no previous engagement with the subject? Maikop is the name given to the culture that extended throughout the Northern Caucasus, from the Caspian to the Black Sea, after the location of a barrow. Discovered in 1897, the barrow was one of the richest in Europe and dated from the end of the 4th to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. The contacts between the bearers of the Maikop culture and the nomadic tribes of the Eastern European steppes, where Balkan imports are known, made possible the comparison of the two most investigated chronological systems, the Near Eastern and the Balkan. Based on that comparison, it has been possible to synchronize the principal archaeological cultures of south Eurasia from the 4th to the 3rd millennium BC with the antiquities of the Near East and of the Balkan Peninsula.” Bryn  Mawr Classical Review