9. Todorova 1995:90; Chernykh 1992:52. The burning of houses might have been an intentional ritual act during the Eneolithic; see Stevanovic 1997. But the final fires that consumed the Eneolithic towns of the lower Danube valley and the Balkans about 4000 BCE were followed by region-wide abandonment and abrupt culture change. Region-wide abandonments of large settlements in the North American Southwest (1100–1400 CE) and in Late Classic Maya sites (700–900 CE) in Mesoamerica were associated with intense warfare; see Cameron and Tomka 1993. The kind of climate shift that struck the lower Danube valley about 4100–3800 BCE would not have made tell settlements uninhabitable. Warfare therefore seems a likely explanation.
10. For evidence of overgrazing and soil erosion at the end of the Karanovo VI period, see Dennell and Webley 1975; for the destruction of Eneolithic Yunatsite, see Merpert 1995; and Nikolova 2000.
11. Todorova 1995.
12. See Ellis 1984 for ceramic workshops, and Popov 1979 for flint workshops. I use the Russian spelling (Tripolye, Tomashovka) rather than the Ukrainian (Tripil’ye, Tomashivka), because many site names such as Tripolye are established in the literature outside Ukraine in their Russian spelling.
13. On the demographics, see Dergachev 2003; and Masson 1979. On the flight of Bolgrad-Aldeni refugees, see Sorokin 1989.
14. On Tripolye B1 warfare generally, see Dergachev 2003, 1998b; and Chapman 1999. On Drutsy 1, see Ryndina and Engovatova 1990. For much of the other information in this section I have relied on the review article by Chernysh 1982.
15. The Cucuteni C designation refers only to a type of shell-tempered pottery. The Cucuteni chronology ends with Cucuteni B2. Cucuteni C ware appeared first in sites dated to the Cucuteni A3/Tripolye B1 period and ultimately dominated ceramic assemblages. See Ellis 1984:40–48.
16. The source of the steppe influence on Cucuteni C pottery is usually identified as the early Sredni Stog culture, phase Ib, for Telegin; or the Skelya culture, for Rassamakin.
17. Shell-temper adds to the durability and impact resistance of vessels that are regularly submitted to thermal shock through reheating, and also increases the cooling effect of evaporation, making a shell-tempered pot good for cooking or storing cool drinking water. Cucuteni C ware and fine painted wares were found together both in pit-houses and large two-storied surface houses. Contextual differences in the distribution of Cucuteni C ware and fine ware in settlements have not been described. At some sites the appearance of Cucuteni C wares seems abrupt: Polivanov Yar had traditional grog-tempered coarse wares in the Tripolye B2 occupation but switched to shell-tempered C wares of different shapes and designs in Tripolye C1, whereas the fine painted wares showed clear continuity between the two phases. See Bronitsky and Hamer 1986; Gimbutas 1977; and Marinescu-Bilcu 1981.
18. For the horse-head maces see Telegin et al. 2001; Dergachev 1999; Gheorgiu 1994; and Govedarica and Kaiser 1996.
19. For the skull shapes, see Necrasov 1985; and Marcsik 1971. Gracile “Mediterranean” Tripolye skulls have been found in ritual foundation deposits at Traian (Tripolye B2).
20. For Mirnoe, see Burdo and Stanko 1981.
21. For the eastern migration, see Kruts and Rizhkov 1985.
22. The Iron Age stereotype of nomadic cavalry seems to lie behind some of the writings of Merpert (1974, 1980) and Gimbutas (1977), who were enormously influential.
23. The “awkward seat” hypothesis is based on Near Eastern images that show riders sitting awkwardly on the horse’s rump, a seat more suited to donkey riding. Donkeys have low withers and a high, broad rump. If you sit forward on a donkey and the animal lowers its head, you can easily fall forward to the ground. Donkey riders, therefore, usually sit back on the rump. Horses have high withers, so horse riders sit forward, which also permits them to hang onto the mane. You have to push and lift to get yourself onto a horse’s rump, and then there’s nothing to hold on to. Artistic images that show riders on horseback sitting back on the rump probably indicate only that many Near Eastern artists before 1000 BCE, particularly in Egypt, were more familiar with riding donkeys than horses. The suggestion that riders in the steppes would adopt and maintain a donkey seat on horses is inherently implausible. See Drews 2004:40–55, for this argument.
24. For mutualism and economic exchanges between Old Europe and the Eneolithic cultures of the Pontic steppe, see Rassamakin 1999:112; see also Manzura, Savva, and Bogotaya 1995; and Nikolova 2005:200. Nikolova has argued that transhumant pastoralism was already part of the Old European economy in Bulgaria, but the Yagodinska cave sites she cited are radiocarbon dated about 3900 BCE, during or just after the collapse. Upland pastoral settlements were a small and comparatively insignificant aspect of the tell economies, and only a serious crisis made them the basis for a new economy.
25. Ewers 1955:10.
26. See Benveniste 1973:53–70, for Give and Take, esp. 66–67 for the Hittite terms; for the quotation, see 53. Hittite pai was derived from the preverb pe- with *ai-, with reflexes meaning “give” in Tocharian ai-. Also see the entry for Give in Mallory and Adams 1997:224–225.
27. See Keeley 1996. For mutualist models of the Linear Pottery frontier, see Bogucki 1988. An ethnographic case frequently cited in discussions of mutualist food exchange is that of the horticultural Pueblo Indians and the pedestrian buffalo hunters of the Plains. But a recent study by Susan Vehik suggested that the Pueblo Indians and the Plains bison hunters traded prestige commodities—flint arrowheads, painted pottery, and turquoise—not food. And during a period of increasing conflict in the Plains after 1250 CE, trade actually greatly increased; see Vehik 2002.
28. See Kershaw 2000.
29. See “bride-price” in Mallory and Adams 1997:82–83.
30. In East Africa a group of foragers and beekeepers, the Mukogodo, were forced to obtain livestock after they began to interact and intermarry with stock-raising tribes, because it became impossible for Mukogodo men to obtain wives by offering beehives when non-Mukogodo suitors offered cattle. Cattle were just more valuable. The Mukogodo became pastoralists so that they could continue to have children. See Cronk 1989, 1993.
31. Ewers 1955:185–187.
32. The Sredni Stog site had two levels, Sredni Stog 1 and 2. The lower level (Sredni Stog 1) was an Early Eneolithic DDII occupation, and the upper was the type site for the Late Eneolithic Sredni Stog culture. In older publications the Sredni Stog culture is sometimes called Sredni Stog 2 (or II) to differentiate it from Sredni Stog 1 (or I).
33. The Sredni Stog culture is defined in Telegin 1973. The principal settlement site of the Sredni Stog cultre, Dereivka, is described in English in Telegin 1986; for the Sredni Stog origin of Cucuteni C ware, see 111–112. Telegin’s chronological outline is described in English in Telegin 1987.
34. The longest and most detailed version of Rassamakin’s new model in English is the 123-page article, Rassamakin 1999. Telegin’s four phases (Ia, Ib, IIa, IIb) of the Sredni Stog culture represented, for Rassamakin, at least three separate and successive cultures: (1) the Skelya culture, 4500–4000 BCE (named for Strilcha Skelya, a phase Ib Sredni Stog site for Telegin); (2) the Kvityana culture, 3600–3200 BCE (Kvityana was a phase Ia site for Telegin, but Rassamakin moved it to the equivalent of Telegin’s latest phase IIb); and (3) the Dereivka culture, 3200–3000 BCE (a phase IIa site for Telegin, dated 4200–3700 BCE by radiocarbon). Telegin seemed to stick to the stratigraphy, grave associations, and radiocarbon dates, whereas Rassamakin relied on stylistic arguments.
35. For Sredni Stog ceramics, see Telegin 1986:45–63; 1973:81–101. For skeletal studies, see Potekhina 1999:149–158.
36. For the seeds at Moliukhor Bugor, see Pashkevich 1992:185. For the tools at Dereivka, see Telegin 1973:69, 43. Bibikova actually reported 2,412 horse bones and 52 horse MNI. I have edited out the mandible, skull, and two metacarpals of the “cult stallion.”
37. Only four settlement animal bone samples are reported for Sredni Stog. Most of them are worryingly small (a few hundred bone
s) and screens were not used in excavations (still are not), so bone recovery varied between excavations. For these reasons, the published animal bone percentages can be taken only as rough guides. For an English translation of the faunal reports, see Telegin 1986.
38. Rassamakin (1999:128) assigned the Dereivka cemetery, which he called Dereivka 2, to the Skelya period, before 4000 BCE, and assigned the Dereivka settlement to the Late Eneolithic, around 3300–3000 BCE. Telegin, following the radiocarbon dates from the settlement and the Tripolye B2 bowl found in the cemetery, assigned both to the same period.
39. See Dietz 1992 for the varied interpretations of antler “cheekpieces.”
40. For the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka group, see Nechitailo 1996; and Telegin et al. 2001. The metals are analyzed in Ryndina 1998:159–170; for an English summary, see 194–195. English-language discussions of the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka group are few. In addition to Rassamakin’s description of the Skelya culture, which incorporates Suvorovo-Novodanilovka, see Dergachev 1999; and Manzura, Savva, and Bogotaya 1995. And there is a useful entry under “Suvorovo” in Mallory and Adams 1997.
41. Telegin 2002, 2001.
42. The physical type in Novodanilovka graves is discussed in Potekhina 1999:149–154. The types of the lower Danube valley are described by Potekhina in Telegin et al. 2001; and in Necrasov and Cristescu 1973.
43. Ryndina (1998:159–170) examined copper objects from graves at Giugiurlegti, Suvorovo, Novodanilovka, Petro-Svistunovo, and Chapli. For the copper of Varna and Gumelnitsa, see Pernicka et al. 1997. They document the end of the Balkan mines and the switch to Carpathian ores at about 4000 BCE.
44. The horse-head examples in the Volga steppes were found at Novoorsk near Orenburg and at Lebyazhinka near Samara. For the polished stone mace heads, see Kriukova 2003.
45. For Old European weapons, see Chapman 1999.
46. Equus hydruntinus had a special ritual status in the cemeteries of Varna and Durankulak, but was unimportant in the diet and was on the brink of extinction. Horses (Equus caballus) were rare or absent in the Eneolithic settlements and cemeteries of the Danube valley before the Cernavoda I period, except for sites of the Bolgrad variant. The Gumelnita-related Bolgrad sites had about 8% horse bones. Other Old European sites in the Danube valley had few or no horses. For the Varna and Durankulak equids, see Manhart 1998.
47. See Vehik 2002 on increased warfare and long-distance trade in the Southwest. DiCosmo (1999) observed that increased warfare in the steppes encouraged organizational changes in preexisting institutions, and these changes later made large nomadic armies possible.
48. Contacts between late Tripolye A/early B1 settlements and the Bolgrad culture are summarized in Burdo 2003. Most of the contact is dated to late Tripolye A—Tripolye AIII2 and III3.
49. For Bolgrad sites, see Subbotin 1978, 1990.
50. For the intrusive cemeteries, see Dodd-Opritescu 1978. For the gold and copper hoards, see Makkay 1976.
51. For the Suvorovo kurgan group, see Alekseeva 1976. The Kopchak kurgan is described in Beilekchi 1985.
52. Giurgiulegti is described briefly in Haheu and Kurciatov 1993. One radiocarbon date is published from Giurgiulegti: Ki-7037, 5380±70 BP, or about 4340–4040 BCE, calibrated; I have been told that the date is misprinted in Telegin et al. 2001, 128.
53. The Novodanilovka grave, which was isolated and not in a cemetery, is described in Telegin 1973:113; for Petro-Svistunovo and Chapli, see Bodyans’kii 1968; and Dobrovol’ski 1958.
54. The segion-wide abandonment of tells in about 4000–3500 BCE is observed in Coleman 2000. I do not see how this could have been the event that brought Greek speakers into Greece, because Greek shared many traits with the Indo-Iranian language branch (see the end of chapter 3), and Indo-Iranian emerged much later. The crisis of 4000 BCE probably brought Pre-Anatolian speakers into southeastern Europe.
55. See Madgearu 2001 on de-urbanization in post-Roman Bulgaria. Mace (1993) notes that if grain production falls, cattle are insurance against starvation. Cattle can be moved into a protected area during a period of conflict. Under conditions of declining agricultural yields and increasing conflict, a shift to a greater reliance on herding would make good economic sense.
56. For loot, lucre, and booty in Proto-Indo-European, see Benveniste 1973:131–137; for language shift among the Pathan, see Barth 1972.
57. For Cernavoda I, see Morintz and Roman 1968; and Roman 1978; see also Georgieva 1990; Todorova 1995; and Ilceva 1993. A good recent summary is in Manzura 1999. For the cemetery of Ostrovul Corbului, see Nikolova 2002, 2000.
58. Sherratt 1997b, 1997c. Sherratt suggested that the drinking vessels of the period from 4000 to 2500 BCE were used to serve a beverage that included honey (the basis of mead) and grain (the source of beer), both directly attested in Early Bronze Age Bell Beaker cups. Honey, he suggested, would have been available only in small quantities, and might have been under the control of an elite who apportioned the fermented drink in ceremonies and closed gatherings open to just their inner circle. Proto-Indo-European contained a word for honey (*melit-) and a derivative term for a honey drink (*medhu-).
59. For Cernavoda I-Late Lengyel horses, see Peske 1986; and Bökönyi 1979.
60. For pastoralism, see Greenfield 1999; Bökönyi 1979; and Milisauskas 2002:202.
61. For the prayer to Sius, see Puhvel 1991.
CHAPTER 12. SEEDS OF CHANGE ON THE STEPPE BORDERS
1. Ryndina (1998:170–171) counted 79 copper objects from steppe graves for the Post-Suvorovo period, compared to 362 for Suvorovo-Novodanilovka graves.
2. See Telegin 2002, 1988, 1987; see also Nikolova and Rassamakin 1985; and Rassamakin 1999. Early reports on Mikhailovka are Lagodovskaya, Shaposhnikova, and Makarevich 1959; Shaposhnikova 1961 (this was the article where the division between lower and upper stratum 2 was noticed); and Shevchenko 1957. For the stratigraphic position of Lower Mikhailovka graves, see Cherniakov and Toshchev 1985. Radiocarbon dates for graves with Mikhailovka I pottery are reported in Videiko and Petrenko 2003. Early Mikhailovka II begins about 3500 BCE, in Kotova and Spitsyna 2003.
3. For the Maikop sherd at Mikhailovka I, see Nechitailo 1991:22. For the other pottery exchanges, see Rassamakin 1999:92; and Telegin 2002:36.
4. Pashkevich 2003.
5. The sheep of the Early Bronze Age in southeastern Europe were significantly larger than Eneolithic sheep, which Bökönyi (1987) attributed to a new breed of wool sheep that appeared after about 3500 BCE.
6. At the Cernavoda site three excavation areas yielded three successive archaeological cultures, of which the oldest was Cernavoda I, about 4000–3600 BCE; next was Cernavoda III, about 3600–3000 BCE, contemporary with Baden; and the youngest was Cernavoda II, 3000–2800 BCE. Mikhailovka I probably was contemporary with the end of Cernavoda I and the first half of Cernavoda III. See Manzura, Savva, and Bogatoya 1995.
7. For Mikhailovka I graves at Olaneshti, see Kovapenko and Fomenko 1986; and for Sokolovka, see Sharafutdinova 1980.
8. Potekhina 1999:150–151.
9. “Post-Mariupol” was the label first assigned by Kovaleva in the 1970s. See Nikolova and Rassamakin 1985; Telegin 1987; and Kovaleva 2001.
10. See Ryndina 1998:170–179, for Post-Mariupol metal types.
11. The two graves were Verkhnaya Maevka XII k. 2, gr. 10; and Samarska k.1, gr. 6 in the Orel-Samara region. See Ryndina 1998:172–173.
12. For Razdorske, see Kiyashko 1987, 1994.
13. The percentage of horse bones at Repin is often said to be 80%. Shilov (1985b) reviewed the numbers and came up with 55% horse bones, still a very high number.
14. For Repin/Yamnaya at Cherkasskaya, see Vasiliev and Siniuk 1984:124–125.
15. For Kara Khuduk and Kyzyl-Khak, see Barynkin and Vasiliev 1988; for the fauna, see I. Kuzmina 1988. Also see Ivanov and Vasiliev 1995; and Barynkin, Vasiliev, and Vybornov 1998. For the radiocarbon dates for Kyzyl Khak, see Lavrushin, Spiridonova, and Sulerzhitskii 1998:58–59. For lat
e Khvalynsk graves on the lower Volga, see Dremov and Yudin 1992; and Klepikov 1994.
16. Kruts typed the Chapaevka ceramics as late Tripolye C1, whereas Videiko described Chapaevka as a late Tripolye B2 settlement. See Kruts 1977; and Videiko 2003. Videiko argued that ceramic craft traditions changed at different rates in different settlement groups. Tripolye B2 stylistic habits lingered longer, he suggested, in the Dnieper group (Chapaevka) than they did in the super-settlements of the South Bug group, which shifted to Tripolye C1 styles earlier. Tripolye C2 styles began on the Dniester at Usatovo about 3400–3300 BCE, but Tripolye C2 styles appeared on the Dnieper about 3100 BCE.
17. Kruts 1977:48.
18. For the super-sites, see Videiko 1990, and other articles in the same volume; also see Shmagli and Videiko 1987 and Kohl 2007.
19. At Maidanets’ke, emmer and spelt wheats were the most common cereals recovered; barley and peas also were found in one house. Cattle (35% of domesticates, MNI) were the most important source of meat, with pig (27%) and sheep (26%) as secondary sources; the remaining 11% was equally divided between dogs and horses. About 15% of the animals were red deer, wild boar, bison, hare, and birds. The cattle, pigs, and abundant wild animals indicate substantial forest near the settlement. A forest of about 20
20. The Tripolye B1 settlement of Polivanov Yar on the Dniester overlooked outcrops of high-quality flint. One house was engaged heavily in flint working, with all stages of the tool-making process. In the later Tripolye C1 settlement, all six excavated structures were engaged in flint working, the initial shaping occurred elsewhere, and new products were made (heavy flint axes and chisels about 10 cm long). The Tripolye C1 settlement had become a specialized village of flint workers. Maidanets’ke imported finished flint tools of Dniester flint, probably from Polivanov Yar. At Veseli Kut (150 ha), a Tripolye B2 town east of the South Bug valley, two structures were identified as ceramic workshops. Eight buildings dedicated to ceramic production were found at Varvarovka VIII (40 ha and 200 houses—the largest town in its region), and a similar ceramic factory appeared at Petreni on the Dniester, again the largest town in its area. At Maidanets’ke, eight houses in a row contained looms (indicated by clusters of up to seventy ceramic loom weights) and some had two looms, perhaps a specialized weaver’s quarter. For Polivanov Yar, see Popova 1979; for ceramic workshops, see Ellis 1984.
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World Page 54
