gems, archaeology, archaeogemology, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Pontic, Black Sea, Scythia, Sarmatia

This report continues from the 1984 account, which surveyed archaeological activity in the then Soviet Union during the 1970s and in Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey throughout the 1960s and 1970s (AR 30, 1983–84, 71–97), while the eastern Black Sea region (Kolkhis and Iberia) has more recently been addressed by D.D. Kacharava in AR 37 (1990–91, 79–86), building on her earlier 1984 contribution (AR 30, 98–101), to which readers are referred for Kolkhian archaeological data; the first two-thirds of the 1980s saw intense archaeological work, scholarly conferences, and a substantial output of articles and monographs, but a foreboding development came in 1988 with the termination of Arkheologicheskiye Otkrytiya (AO), the annual compilation of archaeological discoveries for the year 1986, marking the end of the only comprehensive all-Union report on the year’s fieldwork and preliminary findings.