Herding

Across the northern Black Sea steppe in the first millennium BCE, herding supplied food and materials and made movement on horseback central to many communities. But Scythian life was not uniformly nomadic. Pontic Scythians shared the region with settled farmers and agro-pastoralists, and the balance between herding and cultivation varied by place and period. Central Asian and Altai communities, including those of the Pazyryk culture, developed within different regional settings. Later Indo-Scythian kingdoms in South Asia likewise represent a separate regional history, not a continuation of one Scythian empire.

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Herds, pasture, and seasonal movement

Pontic Scythian herds included horses, cattle, and sheep. These animals served different needs: horses provided transport, could be eaten, and supported mounted warfare; cattle and sheep supplied meat and other animal products. Sheep breeding was especially central to the steppe economy. Livestock also helped sustain communities that relied on their own resources, though many Scythian-era settlements combined animal husbandry with farming and trade.

Herders moved animals to maintain access to grazing and water. A camp used the grass around it, and changing seasons altered where fresh growth or sheltered ground could be found. The Greek work Airs, Waters, Places describes households relocating when fodder was exhausted. Moving the animals also meant moving shelter, containers and other equipment needed by the people who tended them.

Evidence for mobile herding sits alongside evidence for settled life. Fortified and other settled communities grew in the Pontic region, and people there cultivated crops as well as keeping livestock. A 2021 isotope study of human remains from Iron Age sites in Ukraine found generally low levels of mobility among many people living near urban centres, alongside some individuals with evidence of movement between regions. Dietary results also pointed to differences in reliance on millet and animal-based foods. These findings show that herding and mobility did not make all Scythian-era people nomads.

Food, materials, and the work of animal care

Mare’s milk supplied food and could be processed into products that kept longer than fresh milk. Herodotus describes workers stirring milk in deep wooden vessels and separating the valued upper part. His account connects dairy production with enslaved labour. Milking, carrying containers and processing their contents added work at camp to the task of moving and watching animals.

Animal work also took place within unequal social arrangements. Accounts of Pontic Scythian society describe stable workers and farmers recruited from dependent, unfree populations, and enslaved people assigned to cattle care and dairy production. These descriptions indicate that animal husbandry could depend on labour beyond the household or herding group that owned the animals.

Horses, riding, and equipment

A riding horse needed equipment and handling as well as pasture. A bridle held a bit in the mouth, with reins carrying the rider’s signals. A girth secured the saddle around the body. Padded supports helped distribute the rider’s weight, and straps kept the equipment in place during movement. Fitting and maintaining this gear made leatherworking and repairs part of life with horses.

Horse equipment included bridles and other harness fittings, some decorated with animal imagery. Metalworking workshops in the Pontic forest-steppe made weapons and horse gear; in the Middle Scythian period, Kamianka became an important production centre. Horse equipment also appears in burials, where its placement gave horses and riding equipment a role in funerary display. A bridle ornament dated to 350–310 BCE in the National Museum of the History of Ukraine’s collection is one example of such decorated equipment.

Especially detailed evidence comes from Pazyryk burials in the Altai, dated broadly to the sixth to third centuries BCE. Because ice preserved organic materials in some graves, finds include reins, bits, head and breast fittings, felt saddlecloths, and leather or felt masks for horses. Some fittings were decorated with animal motifs. This is evidence for the material culture of an Altai Saka-related community, not a direct description of Pontic Scythian tack or a universal way of equipping horses.

Breeding and horse selection

Horse remains from eastern Scythian-era burials preserve evidence of breeding choices. A 2017 genomic study included horses from Arzhan in Tuva and Berel in the Kazakh Altai. The Berel animals came from a burial about 2,300 years old. Their DNA showed a variety of coat colours and no detectable close inbreeding among the sampled horses.

The researchers also identified selection associated with robust forelimbs. Choosing breeding animals could influence appearance and physical build while retaining several bloodlines. These results concern particular eastern burial herds, but they show herders actively shaping horse populations over generations rather than merely collecting interchangeable mounts.

For the wider setting, see Scythian daily life.