The Maikop Treasure
A. M. Leskov

THe MaikOp Treasure is a collection of more than 300 objects ranging in date from the
Bronze Age through the Medieval period and currently held in four institutions––the Staatliche
Museen and Museum für Vor- und Frügeschichte in Berlin, the Penn Museum in Philadelphia, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Originally assembled in the 1890s by a wealthy employee of Tsar Nicholas II who oversaw the cultivation of vineyards in the Caucasus, these objects have no single provenance but were excavated from various sites in the general region of the eastern Pontic.

The name Maikop became attached to the collection because some of the pieces are identical to the gold treasure found through controlled excavations at that site, currently in the autonomous region of Adyghea in the Caucasus. Leskov brings decades of expertise to analyzing and illuminating the value of this collection of objects, establishing identifications through comparisons with materials from controlled excavations undertaken in the region
by Soviet and national archaeologists, foremost among them himself.

THe MaikOp Treasure will be invaluable for those working in the Caucasus by providing a synthesis and overview of the characteristics of the region in antiquity in which the collection can be located.

A. M. Leskov, former head of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Art at the Museum
of Oriental Art, Moscow, is a Research Associate in the Mediterranean Section of the Penn
Museum and a Research Associate in the Program for the Archaeology of Ukraine, University
of Pennsylvania.