New types of weapons also appeared. Most of the weapon types in Sintashta graves had appeared earlier—bronze or copper daggers, flat axes, shaft-hole axes, socketed spears, polished stone mace heads, and flint or bone projectile points. In Sintashta-culture graves, however, longer, heavier projectile point types appeared, and they were deposited in greater numbers. One new projectile was a spearhead made of heavy bronze or copper with a socketed base for a thick wooden spear handle. Smaller, lighter-socketed spearheads had been used occasionally in the Fatyanovo culture, but the Sintashta spear was larger (see figure 15.3). Sintashta graves also contained two varieties of chipped flint projectile points: lanceolate and stemmed (see figure 15.12). Short lanceolate points with flat or slightly hollow bases became longer in the Sintashta period, and these were deposited in groups for the first time. They might have been for arrows, since prehistoric arrow points were light in weight and usually had flat or hollow bases. Lanceolate flint points with a hollow or flat base occurred in seven graves at Sintashta, with up to ten points in one grave (SM gr. 39). A set of five lanceolate points was deposited in the chariot grave of Berlyk II, kurgan 10.
More interesting were flint points of an entirely new type, with a contracting stem, defined shoulders, and a long, narrow blade with a thick medial ridge, 4–10 cm long. These new stemmed points might have been for javelins. Their narrow, thick blades were ideal for javelin points because the heavier shaft of a javelin (compared to an arrow) causes greater torque stress on the embedded point at the moment of impact; moreover, a narrow, thick point could penetrate deeper before breaking than a thin point could.28 A stemmed point, by definition, is mounted in a socketed foreshaft, a complex type of attachment usually found on spears or javelins rather than arrows. Smaller stemmed points had existed earlier in Fatyanovo and Balanovo tool kits and were included in occasional graves, as at the Fatyanovo cemetery of Volosovo-Danilovskii, where 1 grave out of 107 contained a stemmed point, but it was shorter than the Sintashta type (only 3–4 cm long). Sintashta stemmed points appeared in sets of up to twenty in a single grave (chariot gr. 20 at the Sintashta SM cemetery), as well as in a few Potapovka graves on the middle Volga. Stemmed points made of cast bronze, perhaps imitations of the flint stemmed ones, occurred in one chariot grave (SM gr. 16) and in two other graves at Sintashta (see figure 15.10).
Figure 15.12 Flint projectile point types of the Sintashta culture. The top row was a new type for steppe cultures, possibly related to the introduction of the javelin. The bottom row was an old type in the steppes, possibly used for arrows, although in older EBA and MBA graves it was more triangular. After Gening, Zdanovich, and Gening 1992.
Weapons were deposited more frequently in Sintashta graves. New kinds of weapons appeared, among them long points probably intended for javelins, and they were deposited in sets that appear to represent warriors’ equipment for battle. Another signal of increased conflict is the most hotly debated artifact of this period in the steppes—the light, horse-drawn chariot.
Sintashta Chariots: Engines of War
A chariot is a two-wheeled vehicle with spoked wheels and a standing driver, pulled by bitted horses, and usually driven at a gallop. A two-wheeler with solid wheels or a seated driver is a cart, not a chariot. Carts, like wagons, were work vehicles. Chariots were the first wheeled vehicles designed for speed, an innovation that changed land transport forever. The spoked wheel was the central element that made speed possible. The earliest spoked wheels were wonders of bent-wood joinery and fine carpentry. The rim had to be a perfect circle of joined wood, firmly attached to individually carved spokes inserted into mortices in the outer wheel and a multi-socketed central nave, all carved and planed out of wood with hand tools. The cars also were stripped down to just a few wooden struts. Later Egyptian chariots had wicker walls and a floor of leather straps for shock absorption, with only the frame made of wood. Perhaps originally designed for racing at funerals, the chariot quickly became a weapon and, in that capacity, changed history.
Today most authorities credit the invention of the chariot to Near Eastern societies around 1900–1800 BCE. Until recently, scholars believed that the chariots of the steppes post-dated those of the Near East. Carvings or petroglyphs showing chariots on rock outcrops in the mountains of eastern Kazakhstan and the Russian Altai were ascribed to the Late Bronze Age Andronovo horizon, thought to date after 1650 BCE. Disk-shaped cheekpieces made of antler or bone found in steppe graves were considered copies of older Mycenaean Greek cheekpieces designed for the bridles of chariot teams. Because the Mycenaean civilization began about 1650 BCE, the steppe cheekpieces also were assumed to date after 1650 BCE.29
The increasing amount of information about chariot graves in the steppes since about 1992 has challenged this orthodox view. The archaeological evidence of steppe chariots survives only in graves where the wheels were placed in slots that had been dug into the grave floors. The lower parts of the wheels left stains in the earth as they rotted (see figure 15.13). These stains show an outer circle of bent wood 1–1.2 m in diameter with ten to twelve square-sectioned spokes. There is disagreement as to the number of clearly identified chariot graves because the spoke imprints are faint, but even the conservative estimate yields sixteen chariot graves in nine cemeteries. All belonged to either the Sintashta culture in the Ural-Tobol steppes or the Petrovka culture east of Sintashta in northern Kazakhstan. Petrovka was contemporary with late Sintashta, perhaps 1900–1750 BC, and developed directly from it.30
Figure 15.13 Chariot grave at Krivoe Ozero, kurgan 9, grave 1, dated about 2000 BCE: (1–3) three typical Sintashta pots; (5–6) two pairs of studded disk cheekpieces made of antler; (4) a bone and a flint projectile point; (7–8) a waisted bronze dagger and a flat bronze axe; (9–10) spoked wheel impressions from wheels set into slots in the floor of the grave; (11) detail of artist’s reconstruction of the remains of the nave or hub on the left wheel. After Anthony and Vinogradov 1995, photos by Vinogradov.
Scholars disagree as to whether steppe chariots were effective instruments of war or merely symbolic vehicles designed only for parade or ritual use, made in barbaric imitation of superior Near Eastern originals.31 This debate has focused, surprisingly, on the distance between the chariots’ wheels. Near Eastern war chariots had crews of two or even three—a driver and an archer, and occasionally a shield-bearer to protect the other two from incoming missiles. The gauge or track width of Egyptian chariots of ca. 1400–1300 BCE, the oldest Near Eastern chariots preserved well enough to measure, was 1.54–1.80 m. The hub or nave of the wheel, a necessary part that stabilized the chariot, projected at least 20 cm along the axle on each side. A gauge around 1.4–1.5 m would seem the minimum to provide enough room between the wheels for the two inner hubs or naves (20 + 20 cm) and a car at least 1 m wide to carry two men. Sintashta and Petrovka-culture chariots with less than 1.4–1.5 m between their wheels were interpreted as parade or ritual vehicles unfit for war.
This dismissal of the functional utility of steppe chariots is unconvincing for six reasons. First, steppe chariots were made in many sizes, including two at Kammeny Ambar 5, two at Sintashta (SM gr. 4, 28) and two at Berlyk (Petrovka culture) with a gauge between 1.4 and 1.6 m, big enough for a crew of two. The first examples published in English, which were from Sintashta (SM gr. 19) and Krivoe Ozero (k. 9, gr. 1), had gauges of only about 1.2–1.3 m, as did three other Sintashta chariots (SM gr. 5, 12, 30) and one other Krivoe Ozero chariot. The argument against the utility of steppe chariots focused on these six vehicles, most of which, in spite of their narrow gauges, were buried with weapons. However, six other steppe vehicles were as wide as some Egyptian war chariots. One (Sintashta SM gr. 28) with a gauge of about 1.5 m was placed in a grave that also contained the partial remains of two adults, possibly its crew. Even if we accept the doubtful assumption that war chariots needed a crew of two, many steppe chariots were big enough.32
Second, steppe chariots were not necessarily used as platforms for archers.
The preferred weapon in the steppes might have been the javelin. A single warrior-driver could hold the reins in one hand and hurl a javelin with the other. From a standing position in a chariot, a driver-warrior could use his entire body to throw, whereas a man on horseback without stirrups (invented after 300 CE) could use only his arm and shoulder. A javelin-hurling charioteer could strike a man on horseback before the rider could strike him. Unlike a charioteer, a man on horseback could not carry a large sheath full of javelins and so would be at a double disadvantage if his first cast missed. A rider armed with a bow would fare only slightly better. Archers of the steppe Bronze Age seem to have used bows 1.2–1.5 m long, judging by bow remains found at Berezovka (k. 3, gr. 2) and Svatove (k. 12, gr. 12).33 Bows this long could be fired from horseback only to the side (the left side, for a right-handed archer), which made riders with long bows vulnerable. A charioteer armed with javelins could therefore intimidate a Bronze Age rider on horseback. Many long-stemmed points, suitable for javelins, were found in some chariot graves (Sintashta SM gr. 4, 5, 30). If steppe charioteers used javelins, a single man could use narrower cars in warfare.
Third, if a single driver-warrior needed to switch to a bow in battle, he could fire arrows while guiding the horses with the reins around his hips. Tomb paintings depicted the Egyptian pharaoh driving and shooting a bow in this way. Although it may have been a convention to include only the pharaoh in these illustrations, Littauer noted that a royal Egyptian scribe was also shown driving and shooting in this way, and in paintings of Ramses III fighting the Libyans the archers in the Egyptian two-man chariots had the reins around their hips. Their car-mates helped to drive with one hand and used a shield with the other. Etruscan and Roman charioteers also frequently drove with the reins wrapped around their hips.34 A single driver-warrior might have used a bow in this manner, although it would have been safer to shift the reins to one hand and cast a javelin.
The fourth reason not to dismiss the functionality of steppe chariots is that most of these chariots, including the narrow-gauge ones, were buried with weapons. I have seen complete inventories for twelve Sintashta and Petrovka chariot graves, and ten contained weapons. The most frequent weapons were projectile points, but chariot graves also contained metal-waisted daggers, flat metal axes, metal shaft-hole axes, polished stone mace heads, and one metal-socketed spearhead 20 cm long (from Sintashta SM gr. 30; see figure 15.3). According to Epimakhov’s catalogue of Sintashta graves, cited earlier, all chariot graves where the skeleton could be assigned a gender contained an adult male. If steppe chariots were not designed for war, why were most of them buried with a male driver and weapons?
Fifth, a new kind of bridle cheekpiece appeared in the steppes at the very time that chariots did (see figure 15.14). It was made of antler or bone and shaped like an oblong disk or a shield, perforated in the center so that cords could pass through to connect the bit to the bridle and in various other places to allow for attachments to the noseband and cheek-strap. Pointed studs or prongs on its inner face pressed into the soft flesh at the corners of the horse’s mouth when the driver pulled the reins on the opposite side, prompting an immediate response from the horse. The development of a new, more severe form of driving control suggests that rapid, precise maneuvers by the driving team were necessary. When disk cheekpieces are found in pairs, different shapes with different kinds of wear are often found together, as if the right and left sides of the horse, or the right and left horses, needed slightly different kinds of control. For example, at Krivoe Ozero (k. 9, gr. 1), the cheekpieces with the left horse had a slot located above the central hole, angled upward, toward the noseband (see figure 15.13). The cheekpieces with the right horse had no such upward-angled slot. A similar unmatched pair, with and without an upward-angled slot, were buried with a chariot team at Kamennyi Ambar 5 (see figure 15.14). The angled slot may have been for a noseband attached to the reins that would pull down on the inside (left) horse’s nose, acting as a brake, when the reins were pulled, while the outside (right) horse was allowed to run free—just what a left-turning racing team would need. The chariot race, as described in the Rig Veda, was a frequent metaphor for life’s challenges, and Vedic races turned to the left. Chariot cheekpieces of the same general design, a bone disk with sharp prongs on its inner face, appeared later in Shaft Grave IV at Mycenae and in the Levant at Tel Haror, made of metal. The oldest examples appeared in the steppes.35
Figure 15.14 Studded disk cheekpieces from graves of the Sintashta, Potapovka, and Filatovka types. The band of running spirals beneath the checkerboard panel on the upper left specimen from Utyevka VI was once thought to be derived from Mycenae. But the steppe examples like this one were older than Mycenae. Photos by the author; drawings after Epimakhov 2002; and Siniuk and Kosmirchuk 1995.
Finally, the sixth flaw in the argument that steppe chariots were poorly designed imitations of superior Near Eastern originals is that the oldest examples of the former predate any of the dated chariot images in the Near East. Eight radiocarbon dates have been obtained from five Sintashta-culture graves containing the impressions of spoked wheels, including three at Sintashta (SM cemetery, gr. 5, 19, 28), one at Krivoe Ozero (k. 9, gr. 1), and one at Kammeny Ambar 5 (k. 2, gr. 8). Three of these (3760 ± 120 BP, 3740 ± 50 BP, and 3700 ± 60 BP), with probability distributions that fall predominantly before 2000 BCE, suggest that the earliest chariots probably appeared in the steppes before 2000 BCE (table 15.1). Disk-shaped cheekpieces, usually interpreted as specialized chariot gear, also occur in steppe graves of the Sintashta and Potapovka types dated by radiocarbon before 2000 BCE. In contrast, in the Near East the oldest images of true chariots—vehicles with two spoked wheels, pulled by horses rather than asses or onagers, controlled with bits rather than lip- or nose-rings, and guided by a standing warrior, not a seated driver—first appeared about 1800 BCE, on Old Syrian seals. The oldest images in Near Eastern art of vehicles with two spoked wheels appeared on seals from Karum Kanesh II, dated about 1900 BCE, but the equids were of an uncertain type (possibly native asses or onagers) and they were controlled by nose-rings (see figure 15.15). Excavations at Tell Brak in northern Syria recovered 102 cart models and 191 equid figurines from the parts of this ancient walled caravan city dated to the late Akkadian and Ur III periods, 2350–2000 BCE by the standard or “middle” chronology. None of the equid figurines was clearly a horse. Two-wheeled carts were common among the vehicle models, but they had built-in seats and solid wheels. No chariot models were found. Chariots were unknown here as they were elsewhere in the Near East before about 1800 BCE.36
Chariots were invented earliest in the steppes, where they were used in warfare. They were introduced to the Near East through Central Asia, with steppe horses and studded disk cheekpieces (see chapter 16). The horse-drawn chariot was faster and more maneuverable than the old solid-wheeled battle-cart or battle-wagon that had been pulled into inter-urban battles by ass-onager hybrids in the armies of Early Dynastic, Akkadian, and Ur III kings between 2900 and 2000 BCE. These heavy, clumsy vehicles, mistakenly described as chariots in many books and catalogues, were similar to steppe chariots in one way: they were consistently depicted carrying javelin-hurling warriors, not archers. When horse-drawn chariots appeared in the Near East they quickly came to dominate inter-urban battles as swift platforms for archers, perhaps a Near Eastern innovation. Their wheels also were made differently, with just four or six spokes, apparently another improvement on the steppe design.
Among the Mitanni of northern Syria, in 1500–1350 BC, whose chariot tactics might have been imported with their Old Indic chariot terminology from a source somewhere in the steppes, chariots were organized into squadrons of five or six; six such units (thirty to thirty-six chariots) were combined with infantry under a brigade commander. A similar organization appeared in Chou China a millennium later: five chariots in a squadron, five squadrons in a brigade (twenty-five), with ten to twenty-five support infantry for each chariot.37 Steppe chariots might
also have operated in squadrons supported by individuals on foot or even on horseback, who could have run forward to pursue the enemy with hand weapons or to rescue the charioteer if he were thrown.
Chariots were effective in tribal wars in the steppes: they were noisy, fast, and intimidating, and provided an elevated platform from which a skilled driver could hurl a sheath full of javelins. As the car hit uneven ground at high speed, the driver’s legs had to absorb each bounce, and the driver’s weight had to shift to the bouncing side. To drive through a turn, the inside horse had to be pulled in while the outside horse was given rein. Doing this well and hurling a javelin at the same time required a lot of practice. Chariots were supreme advertisements of wealth; difficult to make and requiring great athletic skill and a team of specially trained horses to drive, they were available only to those who could delegate much of their daily labor to hired herders. A chariot was material proof that the driver was able to fund a substantial alliance or was supported by someone who had the means. Taken together, the evidence from fortifications, weapon types, and numbers, and the tactical innovation of chariot warfare, all indicate that conflict increased in both scale and intensity in the northern steppes during the early Sintashta period, after about 2100 BCE. It is also apparent that chariots played an important role in this new kind of conflict.
Figure 15.15 Two-wheeled, high-speed vehicles of the ancient Near East prior to the appearance of the chariot: (a) cast copper model of a straddle-car with solid wheels pulled by a team of ass-onager-type equids from Tell Agrab, 2700–2500 BCE; (b and c) engraved seal images of vehicles with four-spoked wheels, pulled by equids (?) controlled with lip- or nose-rings from karum Kanesh II, 1900 BCE. After Raulwing 2000, figures 7.2 and 10.1.
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World Page 43