Scythians review – wine, weed and war as the Siberian nomads charge into battle

British Museum, London
From horse armour to the tattooed skin of a warrior and a tent for smoking hemp, this beguiling exhibition unearths the intimate relics of an entire nomadic culture

When the composer Igor Stravinsky and the artist-archaeologist Nicholas Roerich sat down to create a primeval ballet of prehistory and human sacrifice in 1911, they found inspiration in the strange world of the ancient Scythians. The Rite of Spring, the ballet unleashed in Paris two years later, draws on Roerich’s own excavations to paint its scything musical picture of the violent Scythian past. His set included paintings of their burial mounds.

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