3. Przewalkski horses are named after the Polish colonel who first formally described them in 1881. A Russian noble, Frederic von Falz-fein, and a German animal collector, Carl Hagenbeck, captured dozens of them in Mongolia, in 1899 and 1901. All modern Przewalski’s are descended from about 15 of these animals. Their wild cousins were hunted to extinction after World War II; the last ones were sighted in Mongolia in 1969. Zoo-bred populations were reintroduced to two preserves in Mongolia in 1992, where once again they are thriving.
4. For differences between east-Ural and west-Ural Upper Paleolithic cultures, see Boriskovskii 1993, and Lisitsyn 1996.
5. For a wide-ranging study of the Ice Age Caspian, the Khvalynian Sea, and the Black Sea, including the “Noah’s Flood” hypothesis, see Yanko-Hombach et al. 2006.
6. For the decline of matriliny among cattle herders, see Holden and Mace 2003.
7. For Y-chromosome data on early European cattle, see Gotherstrom et al. 2005. For MtDNA, see Troy et al. 2001; and Bradley et al. 1996.
8. For agricultural frontier demography, see Lefferts 1977; and Simkins and Wernstedt 1971.
9. For the oldest Cris site in the lower Danube valley, see Nica 1977. For a Starcevo settlement in the plains north of Belgrade, see Greenfield 1994.
10. For Criş immigrants in the East Carpathians, see Dergachev, Sherratt, and Larina 1991; Kuzminova, Dergachev, and Larina 1998; Telegin 1996; and Ursulescu 1984. The count of thirty sites refers to excavated sites. Crig pottery is known in unexcavated surface exposures at many more sites listed in Ursulescu 1984. For the Crig economy in eastern Hungary, see Vörös 1980.
11. For Neolithic bread, see Währen 1989. Crig people cultivated gardens containing four varieties of domesticated wheat: Triticum monococcum, T. dicoccum Shrank, T. spelta, T. aestivocompactum Schieman; as well as barley (Hordeum), millet (Panicum miliaceum), and peas (Pisum)—all foreign to eastern Europe. On the plant evidence, see Yanushevich 1989; and Pashkevich 1992.
12. Markevich 1974:14.
13. For the possible role of acculturated foragers in the origin of the East Carpathian Crig culture, see Dergachev, Sherratt, and Larina 1991; and, more emphatically, Zvelebil and Lillie 2000.
14. On pioneer farmers and language dispersal, see Bellwood and Renfrew 2002; Bellwood 2001; Renfrew 1996; and Nichols 1994. On the symbolic opposition of wild and domesticated animals, see Hodder 1990.
15. Most archaeologists have accepted the argument made by Perles (2001) that the Greek Neolithic began with a migration of farmers from Anatolia. For the initial spread from Greece into the Balkans, see Fiedel and Anthony 2003. Also see Zvelebil and Lillie 2000; and van Andel and Runnels 1995. The practical logistics of a Neolithic open-boat crossing of the Aegean are discussed in Broodbank and Strasser 1991.
16. For *tawro-s, see Nichols 1997a: appendixes. For the association of Afro-Asiatic with the initial Neolithic, see Militarev 2003.
17. The classic Russian-language works on the Bug-Dniester culture are in Markevich 1974; and Danilenko 1971; the classic discussion in English is in Tringham 1971. More recently, see Telegin 1977, 1982, and 1996; and Wechler, Dergachev, and Larina 1998.
18. For the Mesolithic groups around the Black Sea, see Telegin 1982; and Kol’tsov 1989. On the Dobrujan Mesolithic, see Paunescu 1987. For zoological analyses, see Benecke 1997.
19. Most of the dates for the earliest Elshanka sites are on shell, which might need correction for old carbon. Corrected, Elshanka dates might come down as low as 6500–6200 BCE. See Mamonov 1995, and other articles in the same edited volume. For radiocarbon dates, see Timofeev and Zaitseva 1997. For the technology and manufacture of this silt/mud/clay pottery, see Bobrinskii and Vasilieva 1998.
20. For the dates from Rakushechni Yar, see Zaitseva, Timofeev, and Sementsov 1999. For the excavations at Rakushechni Yar, see Belanovskaya 1995. Rakushechni Yar was a deeply stratified dune site. Telegin (1981) described sedimentary stratum 14 as the oldest cultural occupation. A series of new radiocarbon dates, which I ignore here, have been taken from organic residues that adhered to pottery vessels said to derive from levels 9 to 20. Levels 15 to 20 would have been beneath the oldest cultural level, so I am unsure about the context of the pottery. These dates were in the calibrated range of 7200–5800 BCE (7930±130 to 6825±100 BP). If they are correct, then this pottery is fifteen hundred years older than the other pottery like it, and domesticated sheep appeared in the lower Don valley by 7000 BCE. All domesticated sheep are genetically proven to have come from a maternal gene pool in the mountains of eastern Turkey, northern Syria, and Iraq about 8000–7500 BCE, and no domesticated sheep appeared in the Caucasus, northwestern Anatolia, or anywhere else in Europe in any site dated as early as 7000 BCE. The earliest dates on charcoal from Rakushechni Yar (6070+100 BP, 5890 + 105 BP for level 8) come out about 5200–4800 BCE, in agreement with other dates for the earliest domesticated animals in the steppes. If the dated organic residue was full of boiled fish, it could need a correction of five hundred radiocarbon years, which would bring the earliest dates down to about 6400–6200 BCE—somewhat more reasonable. I think the dates are probably contaminated and the sheep are mixed down from upper levels.
21. For 155 Late Mesolithic and Neolithic radiocarbon dates from Ukraine, see Telegin et al. 2002, 2003.
22. On Bug-Dniester plant foods, see Yanushevich1989; and Kuzminova, Dergachev, and Larina 1998. A report of millet and barley impressions from the middle-phase site of Soroki I/level 1a is contained in Markevich 1965. Yanushevich did not include this site in her 1989 list of Bug-Dniester sites with domesticated seed imprints; it is the only Bug-Dniester site I have seen with reports of barley and millet impressions.
23. The dates here are not on human bones, so they need no correction. The bone percentages are extracted from Table 7 in Markevich 1974; and Benecke 1997. Benecke dismissed the Soviet-era claims that pigs or cattle or both were domesticated independently in the North Pontic region. Telegin (1996:44) agreed. Mullino in the southern Urals produced domesticated sheep bones supposedly dated to 7000 BCE, cited by Matiushin (1986) as evidence for migrations from Central Asia; but like the claimed sheep in deep levels at Rakushechni Yar, these sheep would have been earlier than their proposed parent herds at Djeitun, and the wild species was not native to Russia. The sheep bones probably came from later Eneolithic levels. Mati-ushin’s report was criticized for stratigraphic inconsistencies. See Matiushin 1986; and, for his critics, Vasiliev, Vybornov, and Morgunova 1985; and Shorin 1993.
24. Zvelebil and Rowley-Conwy 1984.
25. For captured women and their hyper-correct stylistic behavior, see DeBoer 1986. The archaeological literature on technological style is vast, but a good introduction is in Stark 1998.
26. The Linear Pottery culture in the East Carpathian piedmont overlapped with the Criş culture around 5500–5400 BCE. This is shown at late Cris sites like Grumazejti and Sakarovka that contained a few Linear Pottery sherds. Sakarovka also had Bug-Dniester sherds, so it shows the brief contemporaneity of all three groups.
27. There is, of course, generosity and sharing among farmers, but farmers also understand that certain potential foods are not food at all but investments. Generosity with food has practical limits in bad times among farmers; these are generally absent among foragers. See Peterson 1993; and Rosenberg 1994.
28. The classic text on the Dnieper-Donets culture is Telegin 1968. For an English-language monograph see Telegin and Potekhina. In this chapter I only discuss the first phase, Dnieper-Donets I.
29. For DDI chipped axes, see Neprina 1970; and Telegin 1968:51–54.
30. Vasilievka V was published as a Dnieper-Donets II cemetery, but its radiocarbon dates suggest that it should have dated to DD I. Vasilievka I and III were published as Late Mesolithic, broadly around 7000–6000 BCE, but have radiocarbon dates of the very Early Mesolithic, closer to 8000 BCE. Vasilievka II and Marievka were published as Neolithic but have no ceramics and Late Mesolithic radiocarbon dates, 6500–6000 B
CE, and so are probably Late Mesolithic. Changes in human skeletal morphology that were thought to have occurred between the Late Mesolithic and Neolithic (Jacobs 1993) now appear to have occurred between the Early and Late Mesolithic. These revisions in chronology have not generally been acknowledged. For radiocarbon dates, see Telegin et al. 2002, 2003. See also Jacobs 1993, and my reply in Anthony 1994.
31. For Varfolomievka, see Yudin 1998, 1988.
32. The zoologist Bibikova identified domesticated animals—sheep, cattle, and horses—at Matveev Kurgan in levels dated 6400–6000 BCE. Today neither the German zoologist Benecke nor the Ukrainian archaeologist Telegin give credit to Bibikova’s claims for an independent local domestication of animals in Ukraine. Matveev Kurgan (a settlement, not a kurgan) is located in the Mius River valley north of the Sea of Azov, near Mariupol. Two sites were excavated between 1968 and 1973, numbered 1 and 2. Both contained Grebenikov-type microlithic flint tools and were thought to be contemporary. Two radiocarbon dates from MK 1 average about 6400–6000 BCE, but the single date (on bone) from MK 2 was about 4400–4000 BCE. In the latter period domesticated animals including sheep were common in the region. The artifacts from all depths were analyzed and reported as a single cultural deposit. But at MK 1 the maximum number of flint tools and animal bones was found at a depth of 40–70 cm (Krizhevskaya 1991:8), and the dwelling floor and hearths were at 80–110 cm (Krizhevskaya 1991:16). Most of the animal bones from MK 1 and 2 were from wild animals, principally horses, onagers, and wild pigs, and these probably were associated with the older dates. But the bones identified as domesticated horses, cattle, and sheep probably came from later levels associated with the later date. See Krizhevskaya 1991. Stratigraphic inconsistencies mar the reporting of all three Pontic-Ural sites with claimed very early domesticated animals—Rakushechni Yar, Mullino, and Matveev Kurgan.
CHAPTER 9. COWS, COPPER, AND CHIEFS
1. Benveniste 1973:61–63 for feasts; also see the entry for GIVE in Mallory and Adams 1997:224–225; and the brief recent review by Fortson 2004:19–21.
2. The dates defining the beginning of the Eneolithic in the steppes are principally from human bone, whereas the dates from Old Europe are not. The date of 5200–5000 BCE for the beginning of the Eneolithic Dnieper-Donets II culture incorporates a reduction of −228±30 radiocarbon years prior to recalibration. There is a discussion of this below in note 16.
3. “Old Eur ope” was a term revived by Marija Gimbutas, perhaps originally to distinguish Neolithic European farming cultures from Near Eastern civilizations, but she also used the term to separate southeastern Europe from all other European Neolithic regions. See Gimbutas 1991, 1974. For chronologies, economy, environment, and site descriptions, see Bailey and Panayotov 1995; and Lichardus 1991. For the origin of the term Alteuropa see Schuchhardt 1919.
4. Most of these dates are on charcoal or animal bone and so need no correction. The earliest copper on the Volga is at Khvalynsk, which is dated by human bone that tested high in 15N (mean 14.8%) and also seemed too old, from about 5200–4700 BCE, older than most of the copper in southeastern Europe, which was the apparent source of the Khvalynsk copper. I have subtracted four hundred radiocarbon years from the original radiocarbon dates to account for reservoir effects, making the Khvalynsk cemetery date 4600–4200 BCE, which accords better with the florescence of the Old European copper age and therefore makes more sense.
5. For the pathologies on cattle bones indicating they were used regularly for heavy draft, see Ghetie and Mateesco 1973; and Marinescu-Bîlcu et al. 1984.
6. For signs and notation, see Gimbutas 1989; and Winn 1981. The best book on female figurines is Pogozheva 1983.
7. Copper tools were found in Early Eneolithic Slatina in southwestern Bulgaria, and copper ornaments and pieces of copper ore (malachite) were found in Late Neolithic Hamangia IIB on the Black Sea coast in the Dobruja hills south of the Danube delta, both probably dated about 5000 BCE. For Old European metals in Bulgaria, see Pernicka et al. 1997. For the middle Danube, see Glumac and Todd 1991. For general overviews of Eneolithic metallurgy, see Chernykh 1992; and Ryndina 1998.
8. For vegetation changes during the Eneolithic, see Willis 1994; Marinescu-Bîlcu, Cârciumaru, and Muraru 1981; and Bailey et al. 2002.
9. Kremenetski et al. 1999; see also Kremenetskii 1997. For those who follow the “beech line” argument in Indo-European origin debates, these pollen studies indicate that Atlantic-period beech forests grew in the Dniester uplands and probably spread as far west as the Dnieper.
10. For the ceramic sequence, see Ellis 1984:48 and n. 3. The Pre-Cucuteni I phase was defined initially on the basis of ceramics from one site, Traian-Dealul Viei; small amounts of similar ceramics were found later at four other sites, and so the phase probably is valid. For an overview of the Tripolye culture, see Zbenovich 1996.
11. Marinescu-Bîlcu et al. 1984.
12. Some Tripolye A settlements in the South Bug valley (Lugach, Gard 3) contained sherds of Bug-Dniester pottery, and others had a few flint microlithic blades like Bug-Dniester forms. These traces suggest that some late Bug-Dniester people were absorbed into Tripolye A villages in the South Bug valley. But late Bug-Dniester pottery was quite different in paste, temper, firing, shape, and decoration from Tripolye pottery, so the shift to using Tripolye wares would have been an obvious and meaningful act. For the absence of Bug-Dniester traits in Tripolye material culture, see Zbenovich 1980:164–167; and for Lugach and Gard 3, see Tovkailo 1990.
13. For Bernashevka, see Zbenovich 1980. For the Tripolye A settlement of Luka-Vrublevetskaya, see Bibikov 1953.
14. For the Karbuna hoard, see Dergachev 1998.
15. The Early Eneolithic cultures I describe in this section are also called Late Neolithic or Neo-Eneolithic. Telegin (1987) called the DDII cemeteries of the Mariupol-Nikol’skoe type Late Neolithic, and Yudin (1988) identified Varfolomievka levels 1 and 2 as Late Neolithic. But in the 1990s Telegin began to use the term “Neo-Eneolithic” for DDII sites, and Yudin (1993) started calling Varfolomievka an Eneolithic site. I have to accept these changes, so sites of Mariupol-Nikol’skoe (DDII) type and all sites contemporary with them, including Khvalynsk and Varfolomievka, are called Early Eneolithic. The Late Neolithic apparently has disappeared. The terminological sequence in this book is Early Neolithic (Surskii), Middle Neolithic (Bug-Dniester-DDI), Early Eneolithic (Tripolye A-DDII-Khvalynsk), and Late Eneolithic (Tripolye B, C1-Sredni Stog-Repin). For key sites in the Dnieper-Azov region, see Telegin and Potekhina 1987; and Telegin 1991. For sites on the middle Volga, see Vasiliev 1981; and Agapov, Vasiliev, and Pestrikova 1990. In the Caspian Depression, see Yudin 1988, 1993.
16. The average level of 15N in DDII human bones is 11.8 percent, which suggests an average offset of about −228±30 BP, according to the method described in the appendix. I subtracted 228 radiocarbon years from the BP dates for the DDII culture and calibrated them again. The unmodified dates from the earliest DDII cemeteries (Dereivka, Yasinovatka) suggested a calibrated earliest range of 5500–5300 BCE (see Table 9.1), but these dates always seemed too early. They would equate DDII with the middle Bug-Dniester and Cris cultures. But DDII came for the most part after Bug-Dniester, during the Tripolye A period. The modified radiocarbon dates for Dnieper-Donets II fit better with the stratigraphic data and with the Tripolye A sherds found in Dnieper-Donets II sites. For lists of dates, see Trifonov 2001; Rassamakin 1999; and Telegin et al. 2002, 2003.
17. For lists of fauna, see Benecke 1997:637–638; see also Telegin 1968:205–208. For 15N in the bones, see Lillie and Richards 2000. Western readers might be confused by statements in English that the DDII economy was based on hunting and fishing (Zvelebil and Lillie 2000:77; Telegin, et al. 2003:465; and Levine 1999:33). The DDII people ate cattle and sheep in percentages between 30% and 78% of the animal bones in their garbage pits. Benecke (1997:637), a German zoologist, examined many of the North Pontic bone collections himself and concluded that domesticated animals “fi
rst became evident in faunal assemblages that are synchronized with level II of the Dnieper-Donets culture.” People who kept domesticated animals were no longer hunter-gatherers.
18. Flint blades 5–14 cm long with sickle gloss are described by Telegin (1968:144). The northwestern DDII settlements with seed impressions are listed in Pashkevich 1992, and Okhrimenko and Telegin 1982. DDII dental caries are described in Lillie 1996.
19. Telegin 1968:87.
20. The Vasilievka II cemetery was recently dated by radiocarbon to the Late Mesolithic, about 7000 BCE. The cemetery was originally assigned to the DDII culture on the basis of a few details of grave construction and burial pose. Telegin et al. 2002 extended the label “Mariupol culture” back to include Vasilievka II, but it lacks all the artifact types and many of the grave features that define DDII-Mariupol graves. The DDII cemeteries are securely dated to a period after 5400–5200 BCE. Vasilievka II is Late Mesolithic.
21. For funeral feasts, see Telegin and Potekhina 1987:35–37, 113, 130.
22. I have modified Khvalynsk dates on human bone to account for the very high average 15N in human bone from Khvalynsk, which we measured at 14.8%, suggesting that an average −408±52 radiocarbon years should be subtracted from these dates before calibrating them (see Authors Note on Dating, and chapter 7). After doing this I came up with dates for the Khvalynsk cemetery of 4700/4600–4200/4100 BCE, which makes it overlap with Sredni Stog, as many Ukrainian and Russian archaeologists thought it should on stylistic and typological grounds. It also narrows the gap between late Khvalynsk on the lower Volga (now 3600–3400 BCE) and earliest Yamnaya. See Agapov, Vasiliev, and Pestrikova 1990; and Rassamakin 1999.
23. Until Khvalynsk II is published, the figure of forty three graves is conditional. I was given this figure in conversation.
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World Page 52