The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World

by David W. Anthony

  21. For the Uruk expansion, see Algaze 1989; Stein 1999; and Rothman 2001. For copper production at Hacinebi, see Özbal, Adriaens, and Earl 2000; for the copper of Iran, see Matthews and Fazeli 2004. For the wool sheep, see Bökönyi 1983; and Pollack 1999.

  22. For Sos and Berikldeebi, see Kiguradze and Sagona 2003; and Rothman 2003.

  23. The Maikop-like pottery was found in pre-Kura-Araxes levels at Berikldeebi. Early Maikop began before the Early Transcaucasian Culture. See Glonti and Dzhavakhishvili 1987.

  24. For pre-Maikop Svobodnoe, see Nekhaev 1992; and Trifonov 1991. For steppe-Svobodnoe exchanges, see Nekhaev 1992; and Rassamakin 2002.

  25. The poses of those buried in the Maikop chieftain’s grave were not clear. For an English-language description of the Maikop culture, see Chernykh 1992:67–83. Quite dated accounts are Childe 1936; and Gimbutas 1956:56–62. A long, detailed description in Russian is in Munchaev 1994. For the Novosvobodnaya graves, see Rezepkin 2000. For the archaeological culture history in the North Caucasus, see Trifonov 1991.

  26. For the silver and gold staff casings with bulls, see Chernopitskii 1987. The 47-cm length of the riveted copper blade is emphasized in Munchaev 1994:199.

  27. Rostovtseff (1922:18–32) argued that Maikop was a Copper Age or, in Anatolian terms, a Late Chalcolithic culture. But Maikop became established as a North Caucasian Bronze Age culture, so it begins somewhat earlier than the Anatolian Bronze Age to which it was originally linked. Some Russian archaeologists now suggest an early Maikop phase that would be Late Eneolithic, whereas later Maikop would remain Early Bronze Age. For Maikop chronology, see Trifonov 1991, 2001. For my own mistaken chronology, see Glumac and Anthony 1992. I should have believed Rostovtseff.

  28. For the east Anatolian seal, see Nekhaev 1986; and Munchaev 1994:169, table 49:1–4.

  29. For Galugai, see Korenevskii 1993, 1995; the fauna is described in 1995:82. Korenevskii considered Galugai a pioneer settlement by migrants from Arslantepe VIA. For Maikop horses, see Chernykh 1992:59.

  30. Rezepkin (1991, 2000) argued that Maikop and Novosvobodnaya were separate and contemporary cultures. Similar radiocarbon dates from Galugai (Maikop) and Klady (Novosvobodnaya) suggested this. But the radiocarbon dates for Galugai are on charcoal and those from Klady are on human bone, which might be affected by old carbon in fish if the Klady people ate a lot of fish. Adjusted for a 15N content of 11%, which would be at the low end of the levels known in the steppes, the oldest Klady dates might drop from about 3700–3500 to about 3500–3350 BCE. I follow the traditional view and represent Novosvobodnaya as an outgrowth of Maikop. Rezepkin compared Novosvobodnaya pottery to TRB or Funnel Beaker pottery from Poland, and megalithic porthole graves at Klady to TRB dolmen porthole graves. He suggested that Novosvobodnaya began with a migration from Poland. Sergei Korenevskii (1993) tried to bring the two phases back into a single culture. Black burnished pottery is found in central Anatolia at Late Chalcolithic and at EBI sites such as Kösk Höyük and Pinarbiji, a closer alternative source.

  31. Shishlina, Orfinskaya, and Golikov 2003.

  32. See Kiguradze and Sagona 2003:89, for the beads at Alikemek Tepesi.

  33. The Maikop-Novosvobodnaya connections of the Sé Girdan kurgans were noticed by A. D. Rezepkin and B. A. Trifonov; both published Russian-language articles describing these connections in 2000. These were brought to Muscarella’s attention in 2002 by Elena Izbitser at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Muscarella (2003) reviewed this history.

  34. For the symbolic power of long-distance trade, see Helms 1992. For primitive valuables, see Dalton 1977; and Appadurai 1986.

  35. For the Novosvobodnaya wagon grave, see Rezepkin and Kondrashov 1988:52.

  36. Shilov and Bagautdinov 1998.

  37. See Nechitailo 1991, for Maikop-steppe contacts. Rassamakin (2002) suggested that Late Tripolye migrants of the Kasperovka type influenced the formation of the Novosvobodnaya culture.

  38. Cannabis might have been traded from the steppes to Mesopotamia. Greek kánnabis and Proto-Germanic *hanipiz seem related to Sumerian kunibu. Sumerian was dead as a widely spoken language by about 1700 BCE, so the connection must have been a very ancient one, and the international trade of the Late Uruk period provides a suitable context; see Sherratt 2003, 1997c. Wine could have been a linked commodity; the Greek, Latin, Armenian, and Hittite roots for “wine” are cognates, and some linguists feel that the root was of Semitic or Afro-Asiatic origin. See Hock and Joseph 1996:513.

  39. For Caucasian horses, see Munchaev 1982; Mezhlumian 1990; and Chernykh 1992:59. For Norjuntepe and Anatolia, see Bökönyi 1991.

  CHAPTER 13. WAGON DWELLERS OF THE STEPPE

  1. For climate change at the beginning of the Yamnaya period, see Kremenetski 1997b, 2002.

  2. The *ghos-ti- root survived only in Italic, Germanic, and Slavic, but the institution was more widespread. See Benveniste 1973:273–288 on Phílos, and entries in Mallory and Adams 1997 on guest and friend. Ivanov suggested that Luwian kasi- ‘visit’ might possibly be cognate with Proto-Indo-European *ghos-ti-, but the relationship was unclear. See Gamkrelidze and Ivanov 1995:657–658, for their discussion of hospitality. In later Indo-European societies, this institution was critical for the protection of merchants and visiting elites or nobles; see Kristiansen and Larsson 2005:236–240. See also Rowlands 1980.

  3. As Mallory has noted, the eastern Indo-European branches did have some agricultural vocabulary. The eastern Indo-Europeans talked about plowed fields, grain, and chaff. The archaeological contrast between east and west is more extreme than the linguistic one, which perhaps reflects the difference between what people knew and could talk about (language) and how they actually behaved most of the time (archaeology). See entries on agriculture, field, and plow in Mallory and Adams 1997.

  4. For the feminine gender as one of the ten innovations distinguishing classic Proto-Indo-European from the archaic form preserved in Anatolian, see Lehrman 2001. For the Afro-Asiatic loans in western Indo-European, see Hock and Joseph 1996:513. For Rudra’s female consorts, see Kershaw 2000:212

  5. Gimbutas 1956:70ff. I would never have thought it possible to penetrate the archaeology of Eastern Europe had it not been for this pioneering English-language synthesis, which opened the door. Nevertheless, I soon began to disagree with her; see Anthony 1986. I was very pleased to spend a few days with her in 1991 at a the National Endowment for the Humanities conference in Austin, Texas, organized by Edgar Polomé.

  6. The hundred-year anniversary of Gorodtsov’s 1903 archaeological expedition on the Northern Donets River was celebrated by three conferences on the Bronze Age (or at least three were planned). The first conference was in Samara in 2001, and the proceedings make a valuable primer on the Bronze Age cultures of the steppes. See Kolev et al. 2001.

  7. See Merpert 1974:123–146, for the Yamnaya “cultural-historical community.”

  8. This Iteppe-pine-forest vegetation community is designated number 19 in the Atlas SSSR, 1962, edited by S. N. Teplova, 88–89. It occurs both in the lowland and mountain steppe environments.

  9. Afanasievo radiocarbon dates are listed in table 13.3. Most of the Afanasievo dates appear to be on wood from the graves, but some are on human bone. Although I have not seen 15N measurements for Afanasievo individuals, later skeletons from graves in the Altai had 15N levels of 10.2 to 14.3%. Applying the correction scale I am using in this book, the Afanasievo dates taken on bone might be too old by 130 to 375 radiocarbon years. I have not corrected them, because, as I said, most appear to have been measured on samples of wood taken from graves, not human bone.

  10. V. N. Logvin (1995) noted that some undated flat-grave cemeteries in northern Kazakhstan might represent a short-lived mixture of early Yamnaya or Repin and Botai-Tersek people. For the Karagash kurgan, see Evdokimov and Loman 1989.

  11. The pottery in the earliest Yamnaya graves in the Volga-Ural region (Pokrovka cemetery I, k. 15, gr. 2; Lopatino k. 1, gr. 31; Gerasimovka II, k.
4, gr. 2) was Repin-influenced; and the pottery in the earliest Afanasievo kurgans (Bertek 33, Karakol) in the Gorny-Altai region also looks Repin-influenced.

  12. For Afanasievo, see Molodin 1997; and Kubarev 1988. On the craniometrics, see Hemphill and Mallory 2003; and Hemphill, Christensen, and Mustafakulov 1997. For the faunal remains from Balyktyul, see Alekhin and Gal’chenko 1995.

  13. On the local cultures, see Weber, Link, and Katzenberg 2002; also Bobrov 1988.

  14. Chernykh 1992:88; Chernykh, Kuz’minykh, and Orlovskaya 2004.

  15. For Tocharian linkages to Afanasievo, see Mallory and Mair 2000.

  16. See Gei 2000:176, for the count of all steppe vehicle graves, and for the wagons of the Novotitorovskaya culture. For the Yamnaya wagon grave at Balki kurgan, see Lyashko and Otroshchenko 1988. For the Yamnaya vehicle at Lukyanovka, see Mel’nik and Serdyukova 1988. For the Yamnaya vehicle graves north of the Danube delta, see Gudkova and Chernyakov 1981. The Yamnaya vehicle graves at Shumaevo cemetery II, kurgans 2 and 6, were the first wagon graves found in the Volga-Ural region in decades, excavated by M. A. Turetskii and N. L. Morgunova in 2001–2002. One wheel was recognized in kurgans 6 and three in kurgan 2; see Morgunova and Turetskii 2003. For early wheeled vehicles in general, see Bakker, et al. 1999.

  17. Mel’nik and Serdiukova (1988:123) suggested that Yamnaya wagons had no practical use but were purely ritual imitations of vehicles used in the cults of Near Eastern kings. This ascribes to the Yamnaya people more veneration of distant Near Eastern symbols and less practical sense than seems likely to me. It also leaves unexplained the Yamnaya shift to an economy based on mobility. Even if some of the wagons placed in graves were lightly built funeral objects, that does not mean that sturdier originals did not exist.

  18. Izbitser (1993) asserted that all these steppe vehicles, including those in graves where only two wheels were found, were four-wheeled wagons. Her opinion has been cited in arguments over the origin of the chariot to suggest that the steppe cultures perhaps had no experience making two-wheeled vehicles; see Littauer and Crouwel 1996:936. But many graves contain just two wheels, including Bal’ki kurgan, grave 57. The image on the Novosvobodnaya cauldron at Evdik looks like a cart. Ceramic cart models associated with the Catacomb culture (2800–2200 BCE) and in the North Caucasus at the Badaani site of the ETC or Kura-Araxes culture (3500–2500 BCE) are interpreted by Izbitser as portraying something other than vehicles. Gei, on the other hand, sees evidence for both carts and wagons, as do I. See Gei 2000:186.

  19. The Dnieper region of Merpret 1974 was divided into no fewer than six microregions by Syvolap 2001.

  20. Telegin, Pustalov, and Kovalyukh 2003.

  21. See Sinitsyn 1959; Merpert 1974; and Mallory 1977. For reconsiderations of Merpert’s scheme in the light of the discovery of the Khvalynsk culture, see Dremov and Yudin 1992; and Klepikov 1994. For a review of all the early Yamnaya variants in the Volga-Don-Caucasus region, and their chronology, see Vasiliev, Kuznetsov, and Turetskii 2000.

  22. Whereas Mikhailovka I produced 1,166 animal bones, Mikhailovka II and III together yielded 52,540 bones.

  23. For Yamnaya seed imprints, see Pashkevich 2003. Pashkevich identifies Mikhailovka II as a settlement of the Repin culture, reflecting the debate about its ceramic affiliation referred to in the text; see also Kotova and Spitsyna 2003.

  24. For Yamnaya and Catacomb chronology, see Trifonov 2001; Gei 2000; and Telegin, Pustalov, and Kovalyukh 2003. For western Yamnaya and Catacomb dates, see Kośko and Klochko 2003.

  25. These views were well stated by Khazanov (1994) and Barfield (1989).

  26. For grain cultivation by steppe nomads, see Vainshtein 1980; and DiCosmo 1994. For modern nomads who ate very little grain, see Shakhanova 1989. For the growth of bodyguards into armies, see DiCosmo 1999, 2002.

  27. See Shilov 1985b.

  28. For a study of seasonal indicators in kurgans in the Kalmyk steppes, see Shishlina 2000. For comments on the Yamnaya herding pattern in the Dnieper steppes, see Bunyatyan 2003.

  29. For Samsonova, see Gei 1979. For Liventsovka, see Bratchenko 1969. The predominance of cattle at these places is mentioned in Shilov 1985b:30.

  30. Surface scatters of Yamnaya lithics and ceramics in the Manych Depression in Kalmykia are mentioned by Shishlina and Bulatov 2000; and in the lower Volga and North Caspian steppes by Sinitsyn 1959:184. Desert or semi-desert conditions in these places make surface sites more visible than they are in the northern steppes, where the sod hides the ground. In the Samara oblast we found LBA occupations 20–30 cm beneath the modern ground surface; see Anthony et al. 2006. The winter camps of the Blackfeet are described in Ewers 1955:124–126: “Green Grass Bull said that bands whose members owned large horse herds had to move camp several times each winter… . However, a short journey of less than a day’s march might bring them to a new site possessing adequate resources for another winter camp … Demands on fuel and grass were too great to allow all the members of a tribe to winter in one large village.” This kind of behavior might make Yamnaya camps hard to find.

  31. The Tsa-Tsa grave is described in Shilov 1985a.

  32. Yamnaya dental pathologies in the middle Volga region with comparative data from Hsiung-Nu and other cemeteries were studied by Eileen Murphy at Queen’s University Belfast as part of the Samara Valley Project. The unpublished internal report is in Murphy and Khokhlov 2004; see also Anthony et al. 2006. For caries in different populations, see Lukacs 1989.

  33. For phytoliths in Yamnaya graves, see Shishlina 2000. The yields of Chenopodium and einkorn wheat were compared by Smith 1989. Amaranthus has 22% more protein (g/kg) than bread wheat, and Chenopodium has 34% more; wheat is higher in carbohydrates than either. For nutrient comparisons, see Gremillion 2004.

  34. For the high incidence of curbitra orbitalis among Yamnaya skeletons, see Murphy and Khokhlov 2004; and Anthony et al. 2006.

  35. For lactose tolerance, see Enattah 2005.

  36. See Vainshtein 1980:59, 72, for comments on cows, milk foods, and poverty.

  37. Mallory 1990.

  38. On genders in Yamnaya graves, see Murphy and Khokhlov 2004; Gei 1990; Häusler 1974; and Mallory 1990.

  39. On “Amazon” graves, see Davis-Kimball 1997; and Guliaev 2003.

  40. Alexander Gei (1990) estimated a population density of 8–12 people per 100 km2in the EBA Novotitorovskaya and 12–14 per 100 km2in the MBA Catacomb periods in the Kuban steppes. But kurgans were erected only for a small percentage of those who died, so Gei’s figures undercount the actual population density by an order of magnitude. At ten times his grave-based estimate, or about 120 people per 100 km2, the population density would have been like that of modern Mongolia, where pastoralism is the dominant element in the economy.

  41. Golyeva 2000.

  42. For the equation between the status and man-days invested in the funeral, see Binford 1971. See also Dovchenko and Rychkov 1988; Mallory’s analysis of their study in Mallory 1990; and Morgunova 1995.

  43. The granulated decoration on the two golden rings from Utyevka I, kurgan 1, grave 1, is surprising, since the technique of making and applying golden granulation requires very specific skills that first appeared about 2500 BCE (Troy II, Early Dynastic III). The middle Volga was apparently connected with the Troad through some kind of network at this time. The axe in the Utyevka grave is an early type, similar to the axes of Novosvobodnaya and Yamnaya, and that implies a very early Poltavka date. The grave form and artifact assemblage taken together suggested to Vasiliev a date at the late Yamnaya-early Poltavka transition, so probably about 2800 BCE. The grave has not been dated by radiocarbon. For Utyevka I and its analogies, see Vasiliev 1980. For the Kutuluk grave with the mace, see Kuznetsov 1991, 2005. For an overview, see Chernykh 1992:83–92.

  44. Chernykh 1992:83–92.

  45. For the Yamnaya grave at Pershin, see Chernykh; and Isto 2002. For the “clean” copper on the Volga, see Korenevskii 1980.

  46. For the Post-Mariupol
graves, see Ryndina 1998:170–179; for Lebedi, see Chernykh 1992:79–83; and for Voroshilovgrad, see Berezanskaya 1979.

  47. For the iron blade, see Shramko and Mashkarov 1993.

  48. Oared longboats are not actually portrayed in surviving art until Early Cycladic II, after 2900–2800 BCE, but the number of settled Cycladic Islands jumped from 10% to 90% for the first time in Early Cycladic I, beginning about 3300 BCE. This was possible only with a reliable form of seagoing transport. Longboats capable of holding twenty to forty oarsmen probably appeared earlier than ECII. See Broodbank 1989.

  49. For Kemi-Oba graves in the Odessa oblast, see Subbotin 1995. For stone stelae in the North Pontic steppes generally, see Telegin and Mallory 1994.

  CHAPTER 14. THE WESTERN INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES

  1. For a good essay on the subject of language shift, see the introduction in Kulick 1992. For Scots Gaelic, see Dorian 1981; see also Gal 1978.

  2. For the Galgenberg site of the Cham culture, see Ottaway 1999. Bökönyi saw the statistical source of the larger horses that appeared in Central Europe in the horse population at Dereivka; Benecke suggested that the horses of Late Mesolithic Mirnoe in the steppes north of the Danube delta were a closer match. But both agreed that the source of the new larger breeds was in the steppes. See Benecke 1994:73–74; and Bökönyi 1974.