The Economy

The economy of the Pontic Scythians was not based on mobile herding alone. Across the northern Black Sea region and its neighbouring steppe and forest-steppe, pastoralists lived alongside farming communities, settled populations and craft workers. Herding supported mobility and supplied valuable animals and animal products, while crops, workshops and trade sustained communities and helped generate wealth for rulers and elites. The balance between these activities varied by place and period, especially during the first millennium BCE.

The word Scythian can also refer broadly to related steppe peoples, but these were not one continuous empire or a single economy. This account focuses chiefly on the Pontic Scythians. The Saka of Central Asia and the archaeological communities of the Altai, including those represented by Pazyryk material, provide distinct regional evidence. The later Indo-Scythian kingdoms of South Asia belong to a separate political history with different political and commercial connections.

On this page5 sections

Herding and seasonal movement

Animal husbandry was central to life on the open steppe. Scythian communities raised horses, cattle and sheep, and animal products were both used locally and exchanged. Horses supported travel, transport and warfare as well as animal husbandry itself. Hides, wool and other products could be traded or worked into useful goods. Pastoralism also connected steppe communities to settled neighbours, who might supply grain and manufactured objects in return.

Some pastoral groups shifted herds between seasonal pastures, seeking grazing and water while avoiding the worst winter conditions. Northern grasslands and more sheltered southern areas offered different resources during the year. Others lived near fields and settlements, combining animals with crops and local exchange.

The forest-steppe, a zone where open grassland meets woodland, offered different opportunities from the open steppe. Communities there could combine livestock raising with crop cultivation and crafts. In the Pontic region, the economic life of a settlement or group therefore depended not simply on whether people were called nomads or farmers, but on how they used local resources and exchanged goods with their neighbours.

Crops, farming and settled communities

Wheat, millet and barley were cultivated in parts of the Pontic region. Millet was especially important in some communities, but access to it and the importance of other foods varied. Crops supplemented the products of herding and could be stored for later use. Archaeological evidence for storage pits, barns and drying structures shows how settlements kept and processed agricultural produce.

The large fortified settlement of Bilsk, in the forest-steppe, illustrates this mixed economy. Its excavated remains include farm buildings and grain-storage features as well as workshops. Evidence indicates that people there farmed, kept livestock, hunted and practised crafts. The population was multi-ethnic, and the settlement’s economy depended on both local production and trade. Some scholars identify Bilsk with Gelonus, a city described by the Greek writer Herodotus, but that identification remains disputed.

A 2021 study of burials at Bilsk, Medvin and Mamai-Gora examined diet and mobility through chemical traces in teeth and bones. Strontium in childhood tooth enamel can be compared with local environmental values to identify people who grew up elsewhere. Carbon isotope patterns help distinguish diets containing millet from those based on other crops. The results suggest varied millet consumption and many people living locally, alongside some movement between regions.

Settlement growth could also accompany a shift toward more permanent residence. On the Dnipro, the settlement known as Kamianka developed from the late fifth century BCE into an important economic and political centre. Archaeological evidence includes houses and farmsteads, storage features, smithies and workshops for casting bronze and working bone and horn. The site’s growth is associated with the gradual adoption of more settled ways of life by some people who had previously used the area for seasonal residence. It did not mean that pastoralism disappeared: farming, animal husbandry and craft production operated side by side.

Work, resources and economic power

Farming and pastoral production relied on different kinds of labour. Fields and herds were maintained by settled communities, household producers and dependants, while specialist craftspeople made tools, weapons, horse equipment and other goods. At Bilsk, excavated traces of blacksmithing, bronze casting, pottery, jewellery-making and bone working show that production extended beyond household farming. At Kamianka, workshops also point to organised craft activity on a larger scale.

Metalworking depended on access to both materials and fuel. Iron was made from bog iron ores found in wet areas of the lower Dnipro, while metalworkers also worked bronze and other metals. Timber from river valleys supplied fuel for production. Workshops in the forest-steppe made weapons and horse equipment during earlier periods; by the Middle Scythian period, Kamianka had become a major production centre. These crafts served practical needs, but they also supplied valuable goods that rulers and elites could use to reward dependants and display status.

Economic power was unevenly distributed. Scythian society included aristocrats, other free people, farmers and dependent populations; the scale of dependence differed between communities and periods. Rulers and elites could control land, collect produce from subordinate groups and benefit from trade. Some accounts describe enslaved people working land and tending animals, while Scythian authorities also supplied captives to Greek trading centres. This labour system coexisted with free farmers, herders and craftspeople rather than replacing their work.

Trade within and beyond the steppe

Trade linked pastoral communities and settlements with Greek colonies on the northern Black Sea coast and with regions farther north and east. Rivers and overland routes carried goods between the forest-steppe, the steppe and coastal markets. From Bilsk, a river route followed the Vorskla to the Dnipro and onward toward Olbia; land routes connected the settlement with the Crimea and neighbouring forest-steppe communities. Imported painted pottery, glassware and transport jars found at Bilsk show the reach of these connections. Transport jars known as amphorae were used to ship goods such as wine.

Exports included grain, livestock and animal products, fish, honey, wax, hides, furs, timber and metal goods. Some furs came from peoples farther north and east, who hunted animals and worked their skins. Scythian rulers also supplied enslaved people and, at times, mounted archers to Greek partners. The range of goods exchanged shows that trade drew on the production of both steppe and settled communities, rather than on a single source of wealth.

Greek traders brought wine, pottery, metal vessels, ornaments, textiles and other crafted goods into Scythia. These imports were especially important to elites, who used valuable objects to express rank and sustain relationships with allies and dependants. Trade did not make the Scythian economy a fully monetised one: coins were used in dealings with Greek partners, but coinage did not serve as a general domestic currency.

Changing routes and shifting economies

Trade and political relations changed over time. From the sixth century BCE, Greek coastal settlements provided growing access to imported goods. In the early fifth century BCE, Scythian rulers sought greater control over some Greek cities and their agricultural hinterlands. They also drew grain from communities in the forest-steppe, which could be transported down rivers to coastal trading centres. Conflict disrupted some Greek cities’ farm territories, and their access to grain shifted as political control and trade routes changed.

Between about 435 and 400 BCE, some Greek cities recovered their independence and rebuilt agricultural lands. In the fourth century BCE, grain trade increasingly ran through the Bosporan kingdom, which became a major supplier of grain to Greece. Scythian elites acted as intermediaries in parts of this trade, drawing wealth from their control of production and exchange. These arrangements tied local farming and pastoralism to markets far beyond the steppe.

In the early third century BCE, the Pontic Scythian kingdom declined amid military setbacks, competition for pasture, economic pressures and changes in steppe conditions. The settlement of Kamianka was abandoned, and grain exports from the northern Black Sea region fell sharply. Sarmatian expansion marked a transition in political power and land use, not the continuation of the same Scythian state. Scythian communities that remained in Crimea and around the lower Dnipro became increasingly settled, combining stock raising and agriculture with trade between the Greek and Roman worlds and peoples farther inland. Their economies belonged to a later regional setting, not to an unchanged version of the earlier Pontic kingdom.

For the wider setting, see Scythian historical context.