Items of the Scythian animal style from the Zayukovo-3 cemetery

The paper describes items made in the Scythian animal style and its Koban variant that emerged among mountain goldsmiths and silversmiths as an imitation of the steppe art. All items come from the Zayukovo-3 cemetery. This group includes chapes, bridle plates, a buckle and a pendant. The animals depicted on the items include heads and halflength images of birds, a coiled predator as well as a scene displaying an elk, birds of prey and an indefinite animal. The items made in the animal style were common in the Baksan river gorge from the middle of the 7th to the early 3rd centuries BC, which is an evidence of regular contacts between highlanders and steppe warriors.