78 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. IIO 



area from the western part of Asia Minor, the Aegean basin, and the 

 Balkan Peninsula to the right bank of the Dnieper [present-day 

 Ukraine] as far back as the end of the third and the beginning of the 

 second millennium B. C. Speakers cited many interesting new data 

 on the links between Black Sea coast and Greek cities — -Attica, 

 Corinth, and Aeolia — as well as Ionian trade centers. 



NORTH CAUCASUS 



Adighe AS.S.R. — A tombstone believed to date back to the first 

 century of our era was recently acquired by the regional museum in 

 Krasnodar. This monument was unearthed in a quarry not far from 

 the place where 2,500 years ago the Greeks founded the town of Sadi 

 (Cepi) which is thought to have been a summer resort for the wealthy 

 slave owners from Phanagoria, the second capital of the Bosphoran 

 Kingdom. It is made of limestone and is in the form of a miniature 

 chapel supported by columns with a niche in which stands a warrior 

 wearing a conical helmet, a short coat, and a sword. 



SOUTH CAUCASUS 



Kuftin's ^^ report is divided into two parts : a description and 

 analysis of the materials excavated near Igdir on the right bank of 

 the Araxes River during 1913 by B. F. Petrov and now in the State 

 Museum of Georgia in Tbilisi [formerly Tiflis] ; and the establishment 

 in the South Caucasus during the Eneolithic period of a proper focus 

 of cultural development contemporaneous with the oldest objects 

 found by Petrov. 



The upper stratum of the Igdir monument yielded an unusual 

 cemetery columbarium with the ashes of the dead in red polished 

 earthenware pitchers with a round hole pierced in the side. In only 

 one case was there an inhumation. These vessels were placed, together 

 with the personal inventory, in the clefts of a tufa cone. This lava 

 flow covered the ash layers of an ancient settlement, situated to the 

 south of the cemetery beyond the road from Igdir to Markara. 



Since evidence of the custom of cremation had not yet been seen 

 in the South Caucasus during the pre-Roman epoch, and because of 



^1 Kuftin, B. A., Urarsku "Kolumbaru" u podotsvli Ararata i Kuro-Arakssku 

 Eneolit. Acad. Sci. U.S.S.R., Tbilisi, 1943. This study was received from 

 Dr. Kuftin in Leningrad on July 2, 1945, while I was a guest at the Jubilee 

 Sessions in Moscow and Leningrad celebrating the 220th anniversary of the 

 Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. The summary in English has been edited 

 and condensed. See footnote 14. (H. F.) 



