I didn't have much luck in /r/history, so they told me to ask here. As the title says, I'm looking for a good general overview of these cultures, preferably from the perspective of a modern historian. I've heard these cultures mentioned numerous times, especially by Greek and Roman sources, but I realized I don't actually know anything about these people other than where they lived. I'm always curious about the cultures of the classical world that are not Greek or Roman.
Thanks!!
This is generally a question for archaeologists, not historians. The problem is that we have VERY limited literary sources on those peoples. On the Scythians, for example, most of what we know is limited to what Herodotus has to say in his Histories. If you found a copy of that and looked up references in the index, you'd have most of the sources for what subsequent historians have said.
If you'd like a good overview of the archaeological evidence for those peoples, I like Barry Cunliffe's Europe Between the Seas.