The Horse, the Wheel, and Language
David W. Anthony
Published by Princeton University Press
Anthony, W..
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Project MUSE., https://muse.jhu.edu/.
For additional information about this book
Access provided by Harvard University (15 Oct 2018 22:01 GMT)
https://muse.jhu.edu/book/36661
160
Chapter Nine
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs
The Proto-Indo-European vocabulary contained a compound word (*weikpotis)
that referred to a village chief, an individual who held power within a
residential group; another root (*reģ-) referred to another kind of powerful
officer. This second root was later used for king in Italic (rēx), Celtic (rīx),
and Old Indic (raj-), but it might originally have referred to an official more
like a priest, literally a “regulator” (from the same root) or “one who makes
things right” (again the same root), possibly connected with drawing “correct”
(same root) boundaries. The speakers of Proto-Indo-European had
institutionalized offices of power and social ranks, and presumably showed
deference to the people who held them, and these powerful people, in return,
sponsored feasts at which food and gifts were distributed.1
When did
a hierarchy of social power first appear in the Pontic-Caspian region? How
was it expressed? And who were these powerful people?
Chiefs first appeared in the archaeological record of the Pontic-Caspian
steppes when domesticated cattle, sheep, and goats first became widespread,
after about 5200–5000 BCE.2
An interesting aspect of the spread
of animal keeping in the steppes was the concurrent rapid rise of chiefs
who wore multiple belts and strings of polished shell beads, bone beads,
beaver-tooth and horse-tooth beads, boars tusk pendants, boars-tusk caps,
boars-tusk plates sewed to their clothing, pendants of crystal and porphyry,
polished stone bracelets, and gleaming copper rings. Their ornaments must
have clacked and rustled when they walked. Older chiefs carried maces
with polished stone mace-heads. Their funerals were accompanied by the
sacrifice of sheep, goats, cattle, and horses, with most of the meat and
bones distributed to the celebrants so only a few symbolic lower leg pieces
and an occasional skull, perhaps attached to a hide, remained in the grave.
No such ostentatious leaders had existed in the old hunting and gathering
bands of the Neolithic. What made their sudden rise even more intriguing
is that the nitrogen levels in their bones suggest that more than 50% of
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 161
their meat diet continued to come from fish. In the Volga region the bones
of horses, the preferred wild prey of the earlier hunters, still outnumbered
cattle and sheep in kitchen trash. The domesticated cattle and sheep that
played such a large ritual role were eaten only infrequently, particularly in
the east.
What seems at first to be the spread of a new food economy on second
look appears to be deeply interwined in new rituals, new values associated
with them, and new institutions of social power. People who did not accept
the new animal currency, who remained foragers, did not even use formal
cemeteries, much less sponsor such aggrandizing public funeral feasts.
Their dead still were buried simply, in plain clothing, in their old camping
places. The cultural gap widened between those who tended domesticated
animals, including foreign sheep and goats, and those who hunted native
wild animals.
The northern frontier of the new economy coincided with the ecological
divide between the forests in the north and the steppes in the south. The
northern hunters and fishers refused to be shackled to domesticated animals
for another two thousand years. Even in the intervening zone of foreststeppe
the percentage of domesticated animal bones declined and the importance
of hunted game increased. In contrast, the eastern frontier of the
new economy did not coincide with an ecotone but instead ran along the
Ural River, which drained the southern flanks of the Ural Mountains and
flowed south through the Caspian Depression into the Caspian Sea. East
of the Ural River, in the steppes of northern Kazakhstan, steppe foragers of
the Atbasar type continued to live by hunting wild horses, deer, and aurochs.
They lived in camps sheltered by grassy bluffs on low river terraces or
on the marshy margins of lakes in the steppes. Their rejection of the new
western economy possibly was rooted in ethnic and linguistic differences
that had sharpened during the millennia between 14,000 and 9,000 BCE,
when the Khvalynian Sea had divided the societies of the Kazakh and the
Russian steppes. Regardless of its cause, the Ural valley became a persistent
frontier dividing western steppe societies that accepted domesticated animals
from eastern steppe societies that rejected them.
Copper ornaments were among the gifts and baubles traded eastward
across the steppes from the Danube valley to the Volga-Ural region with
the first domesticated animals. The regular, widespread appearance of
copper in the Pontic-Caspian steppes signals the beginning of the Eneolithic.
The copper was Balkan in origin and probably was obtained with the
animals through the same trade networks. From this time forward PonticCaspian
steppe cultures were drawn into increasingly complicated social,
political, and economic relations with the cultures of the Balkans and the
lower Danube valley. The gulf between them, however, only intensified.
By 4400–4200 BCE, when the Old European cultures were at their peak
of economic productivity, population size, and stability, their frontier with
the Pontic-Caspian herding cultures was the most pronounced cultural
divide in prehistoric Europe, an even starker contrast than that between
the northern forest hunters and the steppe herders. The Neolithic and
Eneolithic cultures of the Balkans, Carpathians, and middle and lower
Danube valley had more productive farming economies in an age when
that really mattered, their towns and houses were much more substantial,
and their craft techniques, decorative aesthetics, and metallurgy were
more sophisticated than those of the steppes. The Early Eneolithic herding
cultures of the steppes certainly were aware of the richly ornamented
and colorfully decorated people of Old Europe, but steppe societies developed
in a different direction.3
The Early Copper Age in Old Europe
There is an overall rhythm to the Eneolithic over most of southeastern Europe:
a rise to a new level of social and technological complexity, its flourishing,
and its subsequent disintegration into smaller-scale, more mobile,
and technologically simpler communities at the opening of the Bronze Age.
But it began, developed, and ended differently in different places. Its beginning
is set at about 5200–5000 BCE in Bulgaria, which was in many
ways the heart and center of Old Europe. Pontic-Caspian steppe societies
were pulled into the Old European copper-trade network at least as early
as 4600 BCE, more than six hundred years before copper was regularly
used in Germany, Austria, or Poland.4
The scattered farming hamlets of Bulgaria and southern Romania,
about 5200–5000 BCE, blossomed into increasingly large and solidly built
agricultural villages of large multiroomed timber and mud-plaster houses,
often two-storied, set in cleared and cultivated landscapes surrounded by
herds of cattle, pigs, and sheep. Cattle pulled ards, primitive scratchplows,
across the fields.5
In the Balkans and the fertile plains of the lower
Danube valley, villages were rebuilt on the same spot generation after generation,
creating stratified tells that grew to heights of 30–50 feet, lifting
the village above its surrounding fields. Marija Gimbutas has made Old
Europe famous for the ubiquity and variety of its goddesses. Household
cults symbolized by broad-hipped female figurines were practiced everywhere.
Marks incised on figurines and pots suggest the appearance of a
162 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 163
notation system.6
Fragments of colored plaster suggest that house walls
were painted with the same swirling, curvilinear designs that appeared
on decorated pottery. Potters invented kilns that reached temperatures of
800–1100°C. They used a low-oxygen reducing atmosphere to create a
black ceramic surface that was painted with graphite to make silver designs;
or a bellows-aided high-oxygen atmosphere to create a red or orange
surface, intricately painted in white ribbons bordered with black and red.
Pottery kilns led to metallurgy. Copper was extracted from stone by
mixing powdered green-blue azurite or malachite minerals (possibly used
for pigments) with powdered charcoal and baking the mixture in a
bellows-aided kiln, perhaps accidentally at first. At 800°C the copper separated
from the powdered ore in tiny shining beads. It could then be tapped
out, reheated, forged, welded, annealed, and hammered into a wide variety
of tools (hooks, awls, blades) and ornaments (beads, rings, and other pendants).
Ornaments of gold (probably mined in Transylvania and coastal
Thrace) began to circulate in the same trade networks. The early phase of
copper working began before 5000 BCE.
Balkan smiths, about 4800–4600 BCE, learned to fashion molds that
withstood the heat of molten copper, and began to make cast copper tools
and weapons, a complicated process requiring a temperature of 1,083°C
to liquefy copper metal. Molten copper must be stirred, skimmed, and
poured correctly or it cools into a brittle object full of imperfections. Wellmade
cast copper tools were used and exchanged across southeastern Europe
by about 4600–4500 BCE in eastern Hungary with the Tiszapolgar
culture; in Serbia with the Vinča D culture; in Bulgaria at Varna and in
the Karanovo VI tell settlements; in Romania with the Gumelnitsa culture;
and in Moldova and eastern Romania with the Cucuteni-Tripolye
culture. Metallurgy was a new and different kind of craft. It was obvious
to anyone that pots were made of clay, but even after being told that a
shiny copper ring was made from a green-stained rock, it was difficult to
see how. The magical aspect of copperworking set metalworkers apart,
and the demand for copper objects increased trade. Prospecting, mining,
and long-distance trade for ore and finished products introduced a new era
in inter-regional politics and interdependence that quickly reached deep
into the steppes as far as the Volga.7
Kilns and smelters for pottery and copper consumed the forests, as did
two-storied timber houses and the bristling palisade walls that protected
many Old European settlements, particularly in northeastern Bulgaria. At
Durankulak and Sabla Ezerec in northeastern Bulgaria and at Tîrpeşti in
Romania, pollen cores taken near settlements show significant reductions
in local forest cover.8
The earth’s climate reached its post-glacial thermal
maximum, the Atlantic period, about 6000–4000 BCE, and was at its
warmest during the late Atlantic (paleoclimatic zone A3), beginning about
5200 BCE. Riverine forests in the steppe river valleys contracted because
of increased warmth and dryness, and grasslands expanded. In the foreststeppe
uplands majestic forests of elm, oak, and lime trees spread from the
Carpathians to the Urals by 5000 BCE. Wild honeybees, which preferred
lime and oak trees for nests, spread with them.9
The Cucuteni-Tripolye Culture
The Cucuteni-Tripolye culture occupied the frontier between Old Europe
and the Pontic-Caspian cultures. More than twenty-seven hundred
Cucuteni-Tripolye sites have now been discovered and examined with
small excavations, and a few have been entirely excavated (figure 9.1). The
Cucuteni-Tripolye culture first appeared around 5200–5000 BCE and
survived a thousand years longer than any other part of the Old European
world. Tripolye people were still creating large houses and villages, advanced
pottery and metals, and female figurines as late as 3000 BCE.
They were the sophisticated western neighbors of the steppe people who
probably spoke Proto-Indo-European.
Cucuteni-Tripolye is named after two archaeological sites: Cucuteni,
discovered in eastern Romania in 1909, and Tripolye, discovered in central
Ukraine in 1899. Romanian archaeologists use the name Cucuteni
and Ukrainians use Tripolye, each with its own system of internal chronological
divisions, so we must use cumbersome labels like Pre-Cucuteni
III/Tripolye A to refer to a single prehistoric culture. There is a Borgeslike
dreaminess to the Cucuteni pottery sequence: one phase (Cucuteni C)
is not a phase at all but rather a type of pottery probably made outside the
Cucuteni-Tripolye culture; another phase (Cucuteni A1) was defined before
it was found, and never was found; still another (Cucteni A5) was
created in 1963 as a challenge for future scholars, and is now largely forgotten;
and the whole sequence was first defined on the assumption, later
proved wrong, that the Cucuteni A phase was the oldest, so later archaeologists
had to invent the Pre-Cucuteni phases I, II, and III, one of which
(Pre-Cucuteni I) might not exist. The positive side of this obsession with
pottery types and phases is that the pottery is known and studied in minute
detail.10
The Cucuteni-Tripolye culture is defined most clearly by its decorated
pottery, female figurines, and houses. They first appeared about 5200–
5000 BCE in the East Carpathian piedmont. The late Linear Pottery
164 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 165
people of the East Carpathians acquired these new traditions from the late
Boian-Giuleşti and late Hamangia cultures of the lower Danube valley.
They adopted Boian and Hamangia design motifs in pottery, Boian-style
female figurines, and some aspects of Boian house architecture (a clay
floor fired before the walls were raised, called a ploshchadka floor in Russian).
They acquired objects made of Balkan copper and Dobrujan flint,
again from the Danube valley. The borrowed customs were core aspects of
any tribal farming culture—domestic pottery production, domestic architecture,
and domestic female-centered rituals—and so it seems likely that
at least some Boian people migrated up into the steep, thickly forested valleys
at the peakline of the East Carpathians. Their appearance defined the
Transylvania
Transylvania
CARPATHIANMts.
CARPATHIANMts.
BernashevkaBernashevka
DraguseniDraguseni
Mogilnoe IVMogilnoe IV
TirpestiTirpesti
KarbunaKarbuna
BolgradBolgrad
AldeniAldeni
GumelnitsaGumelnitsa
VarnaVarna
DurankulakDurankulak
LukaLuka
VrublevetskayaVrublevetskaya
Vita LitovskayaVita Litovskaya
BuzkiBuzki
DereivkaDereivka IgrenIgren
SkeliaSkelia ChapliChapli
NikolskoeNikolskoe
SobachkiSobachki
MariupolMariupol
YasinovatkaYasinovatka
KamennomostKamennomost
CaveCave
NalchikNalchik
VarfolomievkaVarfolomievka
KhlopkovskiiKhlopkovskii
KhvalynskKhvalynsk
KrivoluchieKrivoluchie
S’yezzheS’yezzhe
VilavatoeVilavatoe IvanovskayaIvanovskaya
LebyazhinkaLebyazhinka
GundurovkaGundurovka
AlexandriaAlexandria
OrlovkaOrlovka
Kara KhudukKara Khuduk
DzhangarDzhangar
RakushechniYarRakushechniYar
Karanovo tellKaranovo tell
settlementssettlements
DobrujaDobruja
ShulaveriShulaveri
Bernashevka
Draguseni
Mogilnoe IV
Tirpesti
Karbuna
Bolgrad
Aldeni
Gumelnitsa
Varna
Durankulak
Luka
Vrublevetskaya
Vita Litovskaya
Buzki
Dereivka Igren
Skelia Chapli
Nikolskoe
Sobachki
Mariupol
Yasinovatka
Kamennomost
Cave
Nalchik
Varfolomievka
Khlopkovskii
Khvalynsk
Krivoluchie
S’yezzhe
Vilavatoe Ivanovskaya
Lebyazhinka
Gundurovka
Alexandria
Orlovka
Kara Khuduk
Dzhangar
RakushechniYar
Karanovo tell
settlements
Dobruja
F
O
R
A
G
E
R
S
ShulaveriB L A C K S E A
Seaof
Azov
C
A
S
P
I A
N
S
EA
AEGEAN
URALM
ts.
Donets R.
Don R.
Kuban
R.
Dnieste
rR.
S. Bug R.
Dnie
per R.
Danube R.
Volga R.
Ural R.
Samara R.
Kam
a R.
Volga R.
Ui R.
EmbaR.
Halys R.
Kura R.
AraxesR.North CAUCASUS Mts.
BALKAN
Mts.
CARPATHIANMts.
Transylvania
Tersek R.
Pripet
500 km
Steppe/Forest-steppe
boundary
Figure 9.1 Early Eneolithic sites in the Pontic-Caspian region.
beginning of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture—phases Pre-Cucuteni I (?)
and II (about 5200–4900 BCE).
The first places that showed the new styles were clustered near high Carpathian
passes, and perhaps attracted migrants partly because they controlled
passage through the mountains. From these high Carpathian valleys
the new styles and domestic rituals spread quickly northeastward to PreCucuteni
II settlements located as far east as the Dniester valley. As the
culture developed (during pre-Cucteni III/Tripolye A) it was carried across
the Dniester, erasing a cultural frontier that had existed for six hundred to
eight hundred years, and into the South Bug River valley in Ukraine. BugDniester
sites disappeared. Tripolye A villages occupied the South Bug
valley from about 4900–4800 BCE to about 4300–4200 BCE.
The Cucuteni-Tripolye culture made a visible mark on the forest-steppe
environment, reducing the forest and creating pastures and cultivated
fields over wider areas. At Floreşti, on a tributary of the Seret River, the remains
of a late Linear Pottery homestead, radiocarbon dated about 5200–
5100 BCE, consisted of a single house with associated garbage pits, set in
a clearing in an oak-elm forest—tree pollen was 43% of all pollen. Stratified
above it was a late Pre-Cucuteni III village, dated about 4300 BCE,
with at least ten houses set in a much more open landscape—tree pollen
was only 23%.11
Very few Bug-Dniester traits can be detected in early Cucuteni-Tripolye
artifacts. The late Bug-Dniester culture was absorbed or driven away, removing
the buffer culture that had mediated interchanges on the fron-
tier.12
The frontier shifted eastward to the uplands between the Southern
Bug and Dnieper rivers. This soon became the most clearly defined, highcontrast
cultural frontier in all of Europe.
The Early Cucuteni-Tripolye Village at Bernashevka
A good example of an early Cucuteni-Tripolye farming village on that
moving frontier is the site of Bernashevka, wholly excavated by V. G. Zbenovich
between 1972 and 1975.13
On a terrace overlooking the Dniester
River floodplain six houses were built in a circle around one large structure
(figure 9.2). The central building, 12 by 8 m, had a foundation of
horizontal wooden beams, or sleeper beams, probably with vertical wall
posts morticed into them. The walls were wattle-and-daub, the roof
thatched, and the floor made of smooth fired clay 8–17 cm thick on a subfloor
of timber beams (a ploshchadka). The door had a flat stone threshold,
and inside was the only domed clay oven in the settlement—perhaps a
166 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 167
central bakery and work building for the village. The houses ranged from
30m2
to 150m2
in floor area. The population of the village probably was
forty to sixty people. Two radiocarbon dates (5500–5300 bce) seem two
hundred years too old (table 9.1), perhaps because the dated wood fragments
were from burned heartwood that had died centuries before the
village was occupied.
No cemetery was found at Bernashevka or at any other CucuteniTripolye
village. Like the Criş people, the Cucuteni-Tripolye people did
not ordinarily bury their dead. Parts of human skeletons are occasionally
found in ritual deposits beneath house floors, human teeth were used occasionally
as beads, and at Drăguşeni (Cucuteni A4, about 4300–4000
BCE) loose human bones were found in the litter between houses. Perhaps
Bernashevka
site
DneisterRiver
house 1
house 6
house 7
house 3
house 5
house 2
house 4
N
Bernashevka settlement
0 4 8 12m
Figure 9.2 Bernashevka settlement on the Dniester River. After Zbenovich
1980, figure 3.
Table 9.1
Early Eneolithic Radiocarbon Dates
Lab Number BP Date Sample Calibrated Date
1. Pre-Cucuteni II Settlements
Bernashevka
Ki-6670 6440±60 ? 5490–5300 BCE
Ki-6681 6510±55 ? 5620–5360 BCE
Okopi
Ki-6671 6330±65 ? 5470–5210 BCE
2.Tripolye A Settlements
Sabatinovka 2
Ki-6680 6075±60 ? 5060–4850 BCE
Ki-6737 6100±55 ? 5210–4850 BCE
Luka Vrublevetskaya
Ki-6684 5905±60 ? 4850–4710 BCE
Ki-6685 5845±50 ? 4780–4610 BCE
Grenovka
Ki-6683 5860±45 ? 4790–4620 BCE
Ki-6682 5800±50 ? 4720–4550 BCE
3. Dnieper-Donets II Cemeteries (average 15
N=11.8, average offset 228±30
too old)
Osipovka cemetery Skeleton #
OxA6168 7675±70 skeleton 20, bone (invalid?)* 6590–6440 BCE
Ki 517 6075±125 skeleton 53 5210–4800 BCE
Ki 519 5940±420 skeleton 53 5350–4350 BCE
Nikol’skoe cemetery Grave Pit, Skeleton #
OxA 5029 6300±80 E, skeleton 125 5370–5080 BCE
OxA 6155 6225±75 Z, skeleton 94 5300–5060 BCE
Ki 6603 6160±70 E, skeleton 125 5230–4990 BCE
OxA 5052 6145±70 Z, skeleton 137 5210–4950 BCE
Ki 523 5640±400 skeleton ? 4950–4000 BCE
Ki 3125 5560±30 Z, bone 4460–4350 BCE
168 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 169
Table 9.1 (continued)
Lab Number BP Date Sample Calibrated Date
Ki 3575 5560±30 B, skeleton 1 4460–4350 BCE
Ki 3283 5460±40 E, skeleton 125 (invalid?) 4450–4355 BCE
Ki 5159 5340±50 Z, skeleton 105 (invalid?) 4250–4040 BCE
Ki 3158 5230±40 Z, bone (invalid?) 4220–3970 BCE
Ki 3284 5200±30 E, skeleton 115 (invalid?) 4040–3970 BCE
Ki 3410 5200±30 D, skeleton 79a (invalid?) 4040–3970 BCE
Yasinovatka cemetery
OxA 6163 6465±60 skeleton 5 5480–5360 BCE
OxA 6165 6370±70 skeleton 19 5470–5290 BCE
Ki-6788 6310±85 skeleton 19 5470–5080 BCE
OxA 6164 6360±60 skeleton 45 5470–5290 BCE
Ki-6791 6305±80 skeleton 45 5370–5080 BCE
Ki-6789 6295±70 skeleton 21 5370–5080 BCE
OxA 5057 6260±180 skeleton 36 5470–4990 BCE
Ki-1171 5800±70 skeleton 36 4770–4550 BCE
OxA 6167 6255±55 skeleton 18 5310–5080 BCE
Ki-3032 5900±90 skeleton 18 4910–4620 BCE
Ki-6790 5860±75 skeleton 39 4840–4610 BCE
Ki-3160 5730±40 skeleton 15 4670–4490 BCE
Dereivka 1 cemetery
OxA 6159 6200±60 skeleton 42 5260–5050 BCE
OxA 6162 6175±60 skeleton 33 5260–5000 BCE
Ki-6728 6145±55 skeleton 11 5210–4960 BCE
4. Rakushechni Yar Settlement, Lower Don River
Bln 704 6070±100 level 8, charcoal 5210–4900 BCE
Ki-955 5790±100 level 5, shell 4790–4530 BCE
Ki-3545 5150±70 level 4, ? 4040–3800 BCE
Bln 1177 4360±100 level 3, ? 3310–2880 BCE
5. Khvalynsk Cemetery (average 15
N=14.8, average offset 408±52 too old)
AA12571 6200±85 cemetery II, grave 30 5250–5050 BCE
AA12572 5985±85 cemetery II, grave 18 5040–4780 BCE
OxA 4310 6040±80 cemetery II, ? 5040–4800 BCE
Table 9.1 (continued)
Lab Number BP Date Sample Calibrated Date
OxA 4314 6015±85 cemetery II, grave 18 5060–4790 BCE
OxA 4313 5920±80 cemetery II, grave 34 4940–4720 BCE
OxA 4312 5830±80 cemetery II, grave 24 4840–4580 BCE
OxA 4311 5790±80 cemetery II, grave 10 4780–4570 BCE
UPI119 5903±72 cemetery I, grave 4 4900–4720 BCE
UPI120 5808±79 cemetery I, grave 26 4790–4580 BCE
UPI132 6085±193 cemetery I, grave 13 5242–4780 BCE
6. Lower Volga Cultures
Varfolomievka settlement, North Caspian
Lu2642 6400±230 level 2B, unknown material 5570–5070 BCE
Lu2620 6090±160 level 2B, “ 5220–4840 BCE
Ki-3589 5430±60 level 2A, “ 4350–4170 BCE
Ki-3595 5390±60 level 2A, “ 4340–4050 BCE
Kombak-Te, Khvalynsk hunting camp in the North Caspian
GIN 6226 6000±150 ? 5210–4710 BCE
Kara-Khuduk, Khvalynsk hunting camp in the North Caspian
UPI 431 5110±45 ? 3800–3970 BCE
*“Invalid” means the date was contradicted by stratigraphy or by another date.
bodies were exposed and permitted to return to the birds somewhere near
the village. As Gimbutas noted, some Tripolye female figurines seem to
be wearing bird masks.
Half the pottery at Bernashevka was coarse ware: thick-walled, relatively
crude vessels tempered with sand, quartz, and grog (crushed ceramic
sherds) decorated with rows of stabbed impressions or shallow channels
impressed with a spatula in swirling patterns (figure 9.3). Some of these
were perforated strainers, perhaps used for making cheese or yogurt. Another
30% were thin-walled, fine-tempered jugs, lidded bowls, and ladles.
The last 20% were very fine, thin-walled, quite beautiful lidded jugs and
bowls (probably for individual servings of food), ladles (for serving), and
hollow-pedestaled “fruit-stands” (perhaps for food presentation), elaborately
decorated over the entire surface with stamped, incised, and channeled
motifs, some enhanced with white paint against the orange clay.
170 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 171
Lidded bowls and jugs imply that food was served in individual containers
at some distance from the hearth where it was cooked, and their careful
decoration implies that the presentation of food involved an element of
social theater, an unveiling.
Every house at Bernashevka contained fragmented ceramic female figurines
with joined legs, exaggerated hips and buttocks, and schematic rodlike
heads, about 10cm long (figure 9.3). Simple incisions indicated the
pubis and a girdle or waistband. Figurines were found at various places on
the house floors; there was no obvious domestic shrine or altar. The number
of figurines per house ranged from one to twenty-one, but four houses
had nine or more. Almost two thousand similar figurines have been found
in other Pre-Cucuteni II-III/Tripolye A sites, occasionally arranged in
groups seated in chairs. At the Tripolye A site of Luka-Vrublevetskaya on
the Dniester, they were made of clay tempered with a mixture of wheat,
Bernovo
Coarse Ware
Medium Ware
Lenkovtsi
Fine Ware
Lenkovtsi
5 cm
Early
Cucuteni-Tripolye
Material Culture
Figure 9.3 Artifacts of the Pre-Cucuteni II/III-Tripolye A period from the
sites of Bernashevka (most), Bernovo (labeled), and Lenkovtsi (labeled). After
Zbenovich 1980, figures 55, 57, 61, 69, 71, 75, 79; and Zbenovich 1989,
figure 65, 74.
barley, and millet grains—all the grains cultivated in the village—and
with finely ground flour. These, at least, seem to have symbolized the generative
fertility of cultivated grain. But they were only one aspect of domestic
cults. Under every house at Bernashevka was the skull of a domesticated
cow or bull. One house also had wild animal symbols: the skull of a wild
aurochs and the antlers of a red deer. Preconstruction foundation deposits
of cattle horns and skulls, and occasionally of human skulls, are found in
many Tripolye A villages. Bovine and female spirit powers were central to
domestic household cults.
The Bernashevka farmers cultivated emmer and spelt wheats, with some
barley and millet. Fields were prepared with mattocks made of antler
(nineteen examples were found) and polished slate (twenty examples); some
of these might have been attached to ards, which were primitive plows. The
grain was harvested with flint blades of the Karanovo type (figure 9.3).
The animal bones from Bernashevka are the largest sample from any
early Cucuteni-Tripolye site: 12,657 identifiable bones from a minimum of
804 animals. About 50% of the bones (60% of the individuals) were from
wild animals, principally red deer (Cervus elaphus) and wild pig. Roe deer
(Capreolus capreolus) and the wild aurochs (Bos primigenius) were hunted
occasionally. Many early Cucuteni-Tripolye sites have about 50% wild
animal bones. Like Bernashevka, most were frontier settlements established
in places not previously cleared or farmed. In contrast, at the longsettled
locale of Tirpeşti the Pre-Cucuteni III settlement produced 95%
domesticated animal bones. And even in frontier settlements like Bernashevka,
about 50% of all animal bones were from cattle, sheep/goat, and
pigs. Cattle and pigs were more important in heavily forested areas like
Bernashevka, where cattle constituted 75% of the domesticated animal
bones, whereas sheep and goats were more important in villages closer to
the steppe border.
Pre-Cucuteni II Bernashevka was abandoned before copper tools and
ornaments became common enough to lose casually; no copper artifacts
were left in the settlement. But only a few centuries later small copper
artifacts became common. At Tripolye A Luka-Vrublevetskaya, probably
occupied about 4800–4600 BCE, 12 copper objects (awls, fishhooks, a
bead, a ring) were found among seven houses in piles of discarded shellfish,
animal bones, and broken crockery. At Karbuna, near the steppe
boundary, probably occupied about 4500–4400 BCE, a spectacular hoard
of 444 copper objects was buried in a fine late Tripolye A pot closed with
a Tripolye A bowl (figure 9.4). The hoard contained two cast copper
hammer-axes 13–14cm long, hundreds of copper beads, and dozens of flat
172 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 173
“idols,” or wide-bottomed pendants made of flat sheet copper; two
hammer-axes of marble and slate with drilled shaft-holes for the handle;
127 drilled beads made of red deer teeth; 1 drilled human tooth; and 254
beads, plaques, or bracelets made of Spondylus shell, an Aegean shell used
for ornaments continuously from the first Greek Neolithic through the
Old European Eneolithic. The Karbuna copper came from Balkan ores,
and the Aegean shell was traded from the same direction, probably
through the tell towns of the lower Danube valley. By about 4500 BCE
social prestige had become closely linked to the accumulation of exotic
commodities, including copper.14
As Cucuteni-Tripolye farmers moved eastward out of the East Carpathian
piedmont they began to enter a more open, gently rolling, drier landscape.
East of the Dniester River annual precipitation declined and the
forests thinned. The already-old cultural frontier moved to the Southern
Bug river valley. The Tripolye A town of Mogil’noe IV, among the first established
in the South Bug valley, had more than a hundred buildings and
5 cm
5 cm
5 cm
5 cm
5 cm
5 cm
Figure 9.4 Part of the Karbuna hoard with the Tripolye A pot and bowl-lid in
which it was found. All illustrated objects except the pot and lid are copper,
and all are the same scale. After Dergachev 1998.
covered 15–20 hectares, with a population of perhaps between four hundred
and seven hundred. East of the Southern Bug, in the Dnieper valley, were
people of a very different cultural tradition: the Dnieper-Donets II culture.
The Dnieper-Donets II Culture
Dimitri Telegin defined the Dnieper-Donets II culture based on a series
of excavated cemeteries and settlement sites in the Dnieper valley, in the
steppes north of the Sea of Azov, and in the Donets valley. DnieperDonets
II societies created large, elaborate cemeteries, made no female
figurines, had open fires rather than kilns or ovens in their homes, lived in
bark-covered huts rather than in large houses with fired clay floors, had no
towns, cultivated little or no grain, and their pottery was very different in
appearance and technology from Tripolye ceramics. The trajectory of the
Cucuteni-Tripolye culture led back to the Neolithic societies of Old Europe,
and that of Dnieper-Donets II led to the local Mesolithic foragers.
They were fundamentally different people and almost certainly spoke different
languages. But around 5200 BCE, the foragers living around the
Dnieper Rapids began to keep cattle and sheep.
The bands of fishers and hunters whose cemeteries had overlooked the
Rapids since the Early Mesolithic might have been feeling the pinch of
growing populations. Living by the rich resources of the Rapids they might
have become relatively sedentary, and women, when they live a settled life,
generally have more children. They controlled a well-known, strategic area
in a productive territory. Their decision to adopt cattle and sheep herding
could have opened the way for many others in the Pontic-Caspian steppes.
In the following two or three centuries domesticated cattle, sheep, and
goats were walked and traded from the Dnieper valley eastward to the
Volga-Ural steppes, where they had arrived by about 4700–4600 BCE.
The evidence for any cereal cultivation east of the Dnieper before about
4200 BCE is thin to absent, so the initial innovation seems to have involved
animals and animal herding.
Dating the Shift to Herding
The traditional Neolithic/Eneolithic chronology of the Dnieper valley is
based on several sites near the Dnieper Rapids; the important ones are
Igren 8, Pokhili, and Vovchok, where a repeated stratigraphic sequence was
found. At the bottom were Surskii-type Neolithic pots and microlithic
flint tools associated with the bones of hunted wild animals, principally red
174 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 175
deer, wild pigs, and fish. These assemblages defined the Early Neolithic
(dated about 6200–5700 BCE). Above them were Dnieper-Donets phase I
occupations with comb-impressed and vegetal-tempered pottery, still associated
with wild fauna; they defined the Middle Neolithic (probably
about 5700–5400 BCE, contemporary with the Bug-Dniester culture).
Stratified above these deposits were layers with Dnieper-Donets II pottery,
sand-tempered with “pricked” or comb-stamped designs, and large flint
blade tools, associated with the bones of domesticated cattle and sheep.
These DDII assemblages represented the beginning of the Early Eneolithic
and the beginning of herding economies east of the Dnieper River.15
Unlike the dates from DDI and Surskii, most DDII radiocarbon dates
were measured on human bone from cemeteries. The average level of 15
N in
DDII human bones from the Dnieper valley is 11.8%, suggesting a meat
diet of about 50% fish. Correcting the radiocarbon dates for this level of
15
N, I obtained an age range of 5200–5000 BCE for the oldest DDII
graves at the Yasinovatka and Dereivka cemeteries near the Dnieper Rapids.
This is probably about when the DDII culture began. Imported pots of
the late Tripolye A2
Borisovka type have been found in DDII settlements
at Grini, Piliava, and Stril’cha Skelia in the Dnieper valley, and sherds
from three Tripolye A pots were found at the DDII Nikol’skoe cemetery.
Tripolye A2
is dated about 4500–4200 BCE by good dates (not on human
bone) in the Tripolye heartland, and late DDII radiocarbon dates (when
corrected for 15
N) agree with this range. The DDII period began about
5200–5000 BCE and lasted until about 4400–4200 BCE. Contact with
Tripolye A people seems to have intensified after about 4500 BCE.16
The Evidence for Stockbreeding and Grain Cultivation
Four Dnieper-Donets II settlement sites in the Dnieper valley have been
studied by zoologists—Surskii, Sredni Stog 1, and Sobachki in the steppe
zone near the Rapids; and Buz’ki in the moister forest-steppe to the north
(table 9.2). Domesticated cattle, sheep/goat, and pig accounted for 30–75%
of the animal bones in these settlements. Sheep/goat contributed more
than 50% of the bones at Sredni Stog 1 and 26% at Sobachki. Sheep finally
were accepted into the meat diet in the steppes. Perhaps they were
already being plucked for felt making; the vocabulary for wool might have
first appeared among Pre-Proto-Indo-European speakers at about this
time. Wild horses were the most important game (?) animal at Sredni
Stog 1 and Sobachki, whereas red deer, roe deer, wild pig, and beaver were
hunted in the more forested parts of the river at Buz’ki and Surskii 2–4.
Fishing net weights and hooks suggest that fish remained important. This
is confirmed by levels of 15
N in the bones of people who lived on the
Dnieper Rapids, which indicate a meat diet containing more than 50%
fish. Domesticated cattle, pig, and sheep bones occurred in all DDII settlements
and in several cemeteries, and constituted more than half the
bones at two settlement sites (Sredni Stog I and Sobachki) in the steppe
zone. Domesticated animals seem indeed to have been an important addition
to the diet around the Dnieper Rapids.17
Flint blades with sickle gloss attest to the harvesting of cereals at DDII
settlements. But they could have been wild seed plants like Chenopodium
or Amaranthus. If cultivated cereals were harvested there was very little
evidence found. Two impressions of barley (Hordeum vulgare) were recovered
on a potsherd from a DDII settlement site at Vita Litovskaya, near
Kiev, west of the Dnieper. In the forests northwest of Kiev, near the Pripet
marshes, there were sites with pottery that somewhat resembled DDII
pottery but there were no elaborate cemeteries or other traits of the DDII
Table 9.2
Dnieper−Donets II Animal Bones from Settlements
Sobachki Sredni Stog 1 Buz’ki
Mammal Bones (Bones / MNI)*
Cattle 56/5 23/2 42/3
Sheep/goat 54/8 35/4 3/1
Pig 10/3 1/1 4/1
Dog 9/3 12/1 8/2
Horse 48/4 8/1 —
Onager 1/1 — —
Aurochs 2/1 — —
Red deer 16/3 12/1 16/3
Roe deer — — 28/4
Wild pig 3/1 — 27/4
Beaver — — 34/5
Other mammal 8/4 — 7/4
Domestic 129 bones / 62% 74 bones / 78% 57 bones / 31%
Wild 78 bones / 38% 20 bones / 22% 126 bones / 69%
*MNI=minimum number of individuals
176 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 177
culture. Some of these settlements (Krushniki, Novosilki, Obolon’) had
pottery with a few seed impressions of wheat (T. monococcum and T. dicoccum)
and millet (Panicum sativum). These sites probably should be dated
before 4500 BCE, since Lengyel-related cultures replaced them in Volhynia
and the Polish borderlands after about that date. Some forest-zone
farming seems to have been practiced in the southern Pripet forests west
of the Dnieper. But in steppe-zone DDII cemeteries east of the Dnieper,
Malcolm Lillie recorded almost no dental caries, suggesting that the
DDII people ate a low-carbohydrate diet similar to that of the Mesolithic.
No cultivated cereal imprints have been found east of the Dnieper River in
pots dated before about 4000 BCE.18
Pottery and Settlement Types
Pottery was more abundant in DDII living sites than it had been in DDI,
and appeared for the first time in cemeteries (figure 9.5). The growing
importance of pottery perhaps implies a more sedentary lifestyle, but shelters
were still lightly built and settlements left only faint footprints. A
typical DDII settlement on the Dnieper River was Buz’ki. It consisted of
five hearths and two large heaps of discarded shellfish and animal bones.
No structures were detected, although some kind of shelter probably did
exist.19
Pots here and in other DDII sites were made in larger sizes (30–
40cm in diameter) with flat bottoms (pots seen in DDI sites had mainly
pointed or rounded bottoms) and an applied collar around the rim. Decoration
usually covered the entire outside of the vessel, made by pricking
the surface with a stick, stamping designs with a small comb-stamp, or
incising thin lines in horizontal-linear and zig-zag motifs—quite different
from the spirals and swirls of Tripolye A potters. The application of a “collar”
to thicken the rim was a popular innovation, widely adopted across
the Pontic-Caspian steppes about 4800 BCE.
Polished (not chipped) stone axes now became common tools, perhaps
for felling forests, and long unifacial flint blades (5–15cm long) also became
increasingly common, perhaps as a standardized part of a trade or gift
package, since they appeared in graves and in small hoards in settlements.
Dnieper-Donets II Funeral Rituals
DDII funerals were quite different from those of the Mesolithic or Neolithic.
The dead usually were exposed, their bones were collected, and they
were finally buried in layers in communal pits. Some individuals were
Nikolskoe Cemetery
Dnieper Donets II
A
V
G
B
Figure 9.5 Dnieper-Donets II cemetery at Nikol’skoe with funerary ceramics.
Pits A,B,G, and V were in an area deeply stained with red ochre. The other
five burial pits were on a slightly higher elevation. Broken pots and animal
bones were found near the cluster of rocks in the center. After Telegin 1991,
figures 10, 20; and Telegin 1968, figure 27.
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 179
buried in the flesh, without exposure. This communal pit type of cemetery,
with several treatments of the body in one pit, spread to other steppe regions.
The thirty known DDII communal cemeteries were concentrated
around the Dnieper Rapids but occurred also in other parts of the Dnieper
valley and in the steppes north of the Sea of Azov. The largest cemeteries
were three times larger than those of any earlier era, with 173 bodies
at Dereivka, 137 at Nikol’skoe, 130 at Vovigny II, 124 at Mariupol, 68 at
Yasinovatka, 50 at Vilnyanka, and so on. Pits contained up to four layers
of burials, some whole and in an extended supine position, others consisting
of only skulls. Cemeteries contained up to nine communal burial pits.
Traces of burned structures, perhaps charnel houses built to expose dead
bodies, were detected near the pits at Mariupol and Nikol’skoe. At some
cemeteries, including Nikol’skoe (figure 9.5), loose human bones were
widely scattered around the burial pits.
At Nikol’skoe and Dereivka some layers in the pits contained only
skulls, without mandibles, indicating that some bodies were cleaned to the
bone long before final burial. Other individuals were buried in the flesh,
but the pose suggests that they were tightly wrapped in some kind of
shroud. The first and last graves in the Nikol’skoe pits were whole skeletons.
The standard burial posture for a body buried in the flesh was extended
and supine, with the hands by the sides. Red ochre was densely
strewn over the entire ritual area, inside and outside the grave pits, and
pots and animal bones were broken and discarded near the graves.20
The funerals at DDII cemeteries were complex events that had several
phases. Some bodies were exposed, and sometimes just their skulls were
buried. In other cases whole bodies were buried. Both variants were placed
together in the same multilayered pits, strewn with powdered red ochre.
The remains of graveside feasts—cattle and horse bones—were thrown in
the red-stained soil at Nikol’skoe, and cattle bones were found in grave 38,
pit A, at Vilnyanka.21
At Nikol’skoe almost three thousand sherds of pottery,
including three Tripolye A cups, were found among the animal bones
and red ochre deposited over the graves.
Power and Politics
The people of the DDII culture looked different than people of earlier
periods in two significant respects: the profusion of new decorations for
the human body and the clear inequality in their distribution. The old
fisher-gatherers of the Dnieper Rapids were buried wearing, at most, a few
beads of deer or fish teeth. But in DDII cemeteries a few individuals were
MARIUPOL grave 50
KHVALYNSK
MARIUPOL
VARFOLOMIEVKA
NIKOL’SKOE
KHLOPKOVSKII
NIKOL’SKOE
YASINOVATKA
0 2cm
0 2cm
0 5cm
Figure 9.6 Ornaments and symbols of power in the Early Eneolithic, from
Dnieper-Donets II graves, Khvalynsk, and Varfolomievka. The photo of grave
50 at Mariupol, skull at the top, is adapted from Gimbutas 1956, plate 8. The
beads from Nikol’skoe include two copper beads and a copper ring on the left,
and a gold ring on the lower right. The other beads are polished and drilled
stone. The maces from Mariupol and Nikol’skoe, and beads from Nikol’skoe are
after Telegin 1991, figures 29, 38; and Telegin and Potekhina 1987, figure 39.
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 181
buried with thousands of shell beads, copper and gold ornaments, imported
crystal and porphyry ornaments, polished stone maces, bird-bone
tubes, and ornamental plaques made of boar’s tusk (figure 9.6). Boar’s-tusk
plaques were restricted to very few individuals. The tusks were cut into
rectangular flat pieces (not an easy thing to do), polished smooth, and
pierced or incised for attachment to clothing. They may have been meant
to emulate Tripolye A copper and Spondylus-shell plaques, but DDII chiefs
found their own symbols of power in the tusks of wild boars.
At the Mariupol cemetery 310 (70%) of the 429 boar’s-tusk plaques
accompanied just 10 (8%) of the 124 individuals. The richest individual
(gr. 8) was buried wearing forty boars-tusk plaques sewn to his thighs and
shirt, and numerous belts made of hundreds of shell and mother-of-pearl
beads. He also had a polished porphyry four-knobbed mace head (figure
9.6), a bull figurine carved from bone, and seven bird-bone tubes. At Yasinovatka,
only one of sixty-eight graves had boars-tusk plaques: an adult
male wore nine plaques in grave 45. At Nikol’skoe, a pair of adults (gr. 25
and 26) was laid atop a grave pit (B) equipped with a single boar’s-tusk
plaque, a polished serpentine mace head, four copper beads, a copper wire
ring, a gold ring, polished slate and jet beads, several flint tools, and an
imported Tripolye A pot. The copper contained trace elements that identify
it as Balkan in origin. Surprisingly few children were buried at Mariupol
(11 of 124 individuals), suggesting that a selection was made—not all
children who died were buried here. But one was among the richest of all
the graves: he or she (sex is indeterminate in immature skeletons) wore
forty-one boar’s-tusk plaques, as well as a cap armored with eleven whole
boar’s tusks, and was profusely ornamented with strings of shell and bone
beads. The selection of only a few children, including some who were very
richly ornamented, implies the inheritance of status and wealth. Power
was becoming institutionalized in families that publicly advertised their
elevated status at funerals.
The valuables that signaled status were copper, shell, and imported
stone beads and ornaments; boars-tusk plaques; polished stone maceheads;
and bird-bone tubes (function unknown). Status also might have
been expressed through the treatment of the body after death (exposed,
burial of the skull/not exposed, burial of the whole body); and by the
Figure 9.6 (continued) The Varfolomievka mace (or pestle?) is after Yudin
1988, figure 2; Khvalynsk maces are after Agapov, Vasliev, and Pestrikova
1990, figure 24. Boars-tusk plaques, at the bottom, are after Telegin 1991,
figure 38.
public sacrifice of domesticated animals, particularly cattle. Similar markers
of status were adopted across the Pontic-Caspian steppes, from the
Dnieper to the Volga. Boars-tusk plaques with exactly the same flowerlike
projection on the upper edge (figure 9.6, top plaque from Yasinovatka)
were found at Yasinovatka in the Dnieper valley and in a grave at S’yezzhe
in the Samara valley, 400 km to the east. Ornaments made of Balkan
copper were traded across the Dnieper and appeared on the Volga. Polished
stone mace-heads had different forms in the Dnieper valley
(Nikol’skoe), the middle Volga (Khvalynsk), and the North Caspian region
(Varfolomievka), but a mace is a weapon, and its wide adoption as a symbol
of status suggests a change in the politics of power.
The Khvalynsk Culture on the Volga
The initial spread of stockbreeding in the Pontic-Caspian steppes was
notable for the various responses it provoked. The DDII culture, where
the shift began, incorporated domesticated animals not just as a ritual
currency but also as an important part of the daily diet. Other people reacted
in quite different ways, but they were all clearly interacting, perhaps
even competing, with one another. A key regional variant was the Khvalynsk
culture.
A prehistoric cemetery was discovered at Khvalynsk in 1977 on the west
bank of the middle Volga. Threatened by the water impounded behind a
Volga dam, it was excavated by teams led by Igor Vasiliev of Samara (figure
9.7). Its location has since been completely destroyed by bank erosion. Sites
of the Khvalynsk type are now known from the Samara region southward
along the banks of the Volga into the Caspian Depression and the Ryn
Peski desert in the south. The characteristic pottery included open bowls
and bag-like, round-bottomed pots, thick-walled and shell-tempered, with
very distinctive sharply everted thick “collars” around the rims. They were
densely embellished with bands of pricked and comb-stamped decoration
that often covered the entire exterior surface. Early Khvalynsk, well documented
at the Khvalynsk cemetery, began around 4700–4600 BCE in the
middle Volga region (after adjusting the dates downward for the 15
N content
of the humnan bones on which the dates were measured). Late Khval-
ynskonthelowerVolgaisdated3900–3800BCEatthesiteofKara-Khuduk
but probably survived even longer than this on the lower Volga.22
The first excavation at the Khvalynsk cemetery, in 1977–79 (excavation
I), uncovered 158 graves; the second excavation in 1980–85 (excavation II)
recovered, I have been told, 43 additional graves.23
Only Khvalynsk I has
182 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 183
Khvalynsk II
BankofVolga
0 3m
single grave
multiple grave
ritual deposit
Khvalynsk I
cemetery
N
N
0 3cm
0 1 2 3cm
0 5cm
0 1 2 3cm
Figure 9.7 Khvalynsk cemetery and grave gifts. Grave 90 contained copper
beads and rings, a harpoon, flint blades, and a bird-bone tube. Both graves
(90 and 91) were partly covered by Sacrificial Deposit 4 with the bones from
a horse, a sheep, and a cow.
Center: grave goods from the Khvalynsk cemetery—copper rings and bracelets,
polished stone mace heads, polished stone bracelet, Cardium shell ornaments,
boars tusk chest ornaments, flint blades, and bifiacial projectile points.
Bottom: shell-tempered pottery from the Khvalynsk cemetery. After Agapov,
Vasiliev, and Pestrikova 1990; and Ryndina 1998, Figure 31.
been published, so all statistics here are based on the first 158 graves (figure
9.7). Khvalynsk was by far the largest excavated Khvalynsk-type cemetery;
most others had fewer than 10 graves. At Khvalynsk most of the
deceased were layered in group pits, somewhat like DDII graves, but the
groups were much smaller, containing only two to six individuals (perhaps
families) buried on top of one another. One-third of the graves were single
graves, a move away from the communal DDII custom. Only mature
males, aged thirty to fifty, were exposed and disarticulated prior to burial,
probably an expression of enhanced male status, associated with the introduction
of herding economies elsewhere in the world.24
Few children were
buried in the cemetery (13 of 158), but those who were included some of
the most profusely ornamented individuals, again possibly indicating that
status was inherited. The standard burial posture was on the back with the
knees raised, a distinctive pose. Most had their heads to the north and
east, a consistent orientation that was absent in DDII cemeteries. Both the
peculiar posture and the standard orientation later became widespread in
steppe funeral customs.
Khvalynsk had many more animal sacrifices than any DDII cemetery: 52
(or 70) sheep/goat, 23 cattle, and 11 horses, to accompany the burials of 158
humans. (The published reports are inconsistent on the number of sheep/
goat.) The head-and-hoof form of sacrifice appeared for the first time: at
least 17 sheep/goat and 9 cattle were slaughtered and only the skull and
lower leg bones were buried, probably still attached to the animal’s hide. In
later steppe funerals the custom of hanging a hide containing the head and
hooves over the grave or burying it in the grave was very common. The head
and hide symbolized a gift to the gods, and the flesh was doled out to guests
at the funeral feast. Parts of domesticated animals were offered in all phases
of the funerals at Khvalynsk: on the grave floor, in the grave fill, at the edge
of the grave, and in twelve special sacrificial deposits stained with red ochre,
found above the graves (figure 9.7). The distribution of animal sacrifices was
unequal: 22 graves of 158 (14 percent) had animal sacrifices in the grave or
above it, and enough animals were sacrificed to supply about half of the
graves were they distributed equally. Only 4 graves (100, 127, 139, and 55–
57) contained multiple species (cattle and sheep, sheep and horse, etc.) and
all four of those also were covered by ochre-stained ritual deposits above the
grave, with additional sacrifices. About one in five people had sacrificed
domestic animals, and one in forty had multiple domestic animals.
The role of the horse in the Khvalynsk sacrifices is intriguing. The only
animals sacrificed at Khvalysnk I were domesticated sheep/goat, domesticated
cattle, and horses. Horse leg parts occurred by themselves, without
184 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 185
other animal bones, in eight graves. They were included with a sheep/goat
head-and-hoof offering in grave 127, and were included with sheep/goat
and cattle remains in sacrificial deposit 4 (figure 9.7). It is not possible to
measure the bones—they were discarded long ago—but horses certainly
were treated symbolically like domesticated animals at Khvalynsk: they
were grouped with cattle and sheep/goat in human funeral rituals that
excluded obviously wild animals. Carved images of horses were found at
other cemeteries dated to this same period (see below). Horses certainly
had a new ritual and symbolic importance at Khvalynsk. If they were
domesticated, they would represent the oldest domesticated horses.25
There is much more copper at Khvalynsk than is known from the entire
DDII culture, and the copper objects there are truly remarkable (figure
9.7). Unfortunately most of it, an astonishing 286 objects, came from the
43 (?) graves of the Khvalynsk II excavation, still unpublished though
analyses of some of the objects have been published by Natalya Ryndina.
The Khvalynsk I excavation yielded 34 copper objects found in 11 of the
158 published graves. The copper from excavations I and II showed the
same trace elements and technology, the former characteristic of Balkan
copper. Ryndina’s study of 30 objects revealed three technological groups:
14 objects made at 300–500°C, 11 made at 600–800°C, and 5 made at
900–1,000°C. The quality of welding and forging was uniformly low in
the first two groups, indicating local manufacture, but was strongly influenced
by the methods of the Tripolye A culture. The third group, which
included two thin rings and three massive spiral rings, was technically
identical to Old European status objects from the cemeteries of Varna and
Durankulak in Bulgaria. These objects were made in Old Europe and
were traded in finished form to the Volga. In the 158 graves of Khvalynsk
I, adult males had the most copper objects, but the number of graves with
some copper was about equal between the sexes, five adult male graves and
four adult female graves. An adolescent (gr. 90 in figure 9.7) and a child
were also buried with copper rings and beads.26
Polished stone mace-heads and polished serpentine and steatite stone
bracelets appeared with copper as status symbols. Two polished stone
maces occurred in one adult male grave (gr. 108) and one in another (gr.
57) at Khvalynsk. Grave 108 also contained a polished steatite bracelet.
Similar bracelets and mace-heads were found in other Khvalynsk-culture
cemeteries on the Volga, for example, at Krivoluchie (Samara oblast) and
Khlopkovskii (Saratov oblast). Some mace heads were given “ears” that
made them seem vaguely zoomorphic, and some observers have seen horse
heads in them. A clearly zoomorphic polished stone mace head appeared
at Varfolomievka, part of a different culture group on the lower Volga.
Maces, copper, and elaborate decoration of the body appeared with domesticated
animals, not before.27
Khvalynsk settlements have been found at Gundurovka and Lebyazhinka
I on the Sok River, north of the Samara. But the Khvalynsk artifacts
and pottery are mixed with artifacts of other cultures and ages,
making it difficult to isolate features or animal bones that can be ascribed
to the Khvalynsk period alone. We do know from the bones of the Khvalynsk
people themselves that they ate a lot of fish; with an average 15
N measurement
of 14.8%, fish probably represented 70% of their meat diet. Pure
Khvalynsk camps have been found on the lower Volga in the Ryn Peski
desert, but these were specialized hunters’ camps where onagers and saiga
antelope were the quarry, comprising 80–90 percent of the animal bones.
Even here, at Kara Khuduk I, we find a few sheep/goat and cattle bones
(6–9 %), perhaps provisions carried by Khvalynsk hunters.
In garbage dumps found at sites of other steppe cultures of the same
period east of the Don (see below), horse bones usually made up more than
half the bones found, and the percentage of cattle and sheep was usually
under 40%. In the east, cattle and sheep were more important in ritual
sacrifices than in the diet, as if they were initially regarded as a kind of
ritual currency used for occasional (seasonal?) sanctified meals and funeral
feasts. They certainly were associated with new rituals at funerals, and
probably with other new religious beliefs and myths as well. The set of
cults that spread with the first domesticated animals was at the root of the
Proto-Indo-European conception of the universe as described at the
beginning of chapter 8.
Nalchik and North Caucasian Cultures
Many archaeologists have wondered if domesticated cattle and sheep might
have entered the steppes through the Eneolithic farmers of the Caucasus
as well as from Old Europe.28
Farming cultures had spread from the Near
East into the southern Caucasus Mountains (Shulaveri, Arukhlo, and Shengavit)
by 5800–5600 BCE. But these earliest farming communities in the
Caucasus were not widespread; they remained concentrated in a few riverbottom
locations in the upper Kura and Araxes River valleys. No bridging
sites linked them to the distant European steppes, more than 500 km to the
north and west. The permanently glaciated North Caucasus Mountains, the
highest and most impassable mountain range in Europe, stood between
them and the steppes. The bread wheats (Triticum aestivum) preferred in the
186 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 187
Caucasus were less tolerant of drought conditions than the hulled wheats
(emmer, einkorn) preferred by Criş, Linear Pottery, and Bug-Dniester cultivators.
The botanist Zoya Yanushevich observed that the cultivated cereals
that appeared in Bug-Dniester sites and later in the Pontic-Caspian steppe
river valleys were a Balkan/Danubian crop suite, not a Caucasian crop
suite.29
Nor is there an obvious stylistic connection between the pottery or
artifacts of the earliest Caucasian farmers at Shulaveri and those of the earliest
herders in the steppes off to the north. If I had to guess at the linguistic
identity of the first Eneolithic farmers at Shulaveri, I would link them with
the ancestors of the Kartvelian language family.
The Northwest Caucasian languages, however, are quite unlike Kartvelian.
Northwest Caucasian seems to be an isolate, a survival of some unique
language stock native to the northern slopes of the North Caucasus Mountains.
In the western part of the North Caucasian piedmont, overlooking
the steppes, the few documented Eneolithic communities had stone tools
and pottery somewhat like those of their northern steppe neighbors; these
communities were southern participants in the steppe world, not northern
extensions of Shulaveri-type Caucasian farmers. I would guess they spoke
languages ancestral to Northwest Caucasian, but only a few early sites are
published. The most important is the cemetery at Nalchik.
Near Nalchik, in the center of the North Caucasus piedmont, was a
cemetery containing 147 graves with contracted skeletons lying on their
sides in red ochre–stained pits in groups of two or three under stone cairns.
Females lay in a contracted pose on the left side and males on their right.30
A few copper ornaments, beads made of deer and cattle teeth, and polished
stone bracelets (like those found in grave 108 at Khvalynsk and at Krivoluchie)
accompanied them. One grave yielded a date on human bone of
5000–4800 BCE (possibly too old by a hundred to five hundred years, if
the dated sample was contaminated by old carbon in fish). Five graves in
the same region at Staronizhesteblievsk were provided with boars-tusk
plaques of the DDII Mariupol type, animal-tooth beads, and flint blades
that seem at home in the Early Eneolithic.31
An undated cave occupation
in the Kuban valley at Kamennomost Cave, level 2, which could be of the
same date, has yielded sheep/goat and cattle bones stratified beneath a
later level with Maikop-culture materials. Carved stone bracelets and
ornamental stones from the Caucasus—black jet, rock crystal, and
porphyry—were traded into Khvalynsk and Dnieper-Donets II sites, perhaps
from people like those at Nal’chik and Kamennomost Cave 2. The
Nalchik-era sites clearly represent a community that had at least a few
domesticated cattle and sheep/goats, and was in contact with Khvalynsk.
They probably got their domesticated animals from the Dnieper, as the
Khvalynsk people did.
The Lower Don and North Caspian Steppes
In the steppes between Nalchik and Khvalynsk many more sites, of different
kinds, are dated to this period. Rakushechni Yar on the lower Don, near
the Sea of Azov, is a deeply stratified settlement site with a cluster of six
graves at the edge of the settlement area. The lowest cultural levels, with
shell-tempered pottery lightly decorated with incised linear motifs and impressions
made with a triangular-ended stick, probably dated about 5200–
4800 BCE, contained the bones of sheep/goat and cattle. But in the interior
steppes, away from the major river valleys, equid hunting was still the focus
of the economy. In the North Caspian Depression the forager camp of
Dzhangar, also dated 5200 BCE (on animal bone) and with pottery similar
to Rakushechni Yar, yielded only the bones of wild horses and onagers.32
On the eastern side of the lower Volga, sites such as Varfolomievka were
interspersed with Khvalynsk hunters’ camps such as Kara Khuduk I.33
The
settlement at Varfolomievka is stratified and well dated by radiocarbon, and
clearly shows the transition from foraging to herding in the North Caspian
Depression. Varfolomievka was first occupied around 5800–5600 BCE by
pottery-making foragers who hunted onagers and horses (level 3). The site
was reoccupied twice more (levels 2B and 2A). In level 2B, dated about
5200–4800 BCE, people constructed three pit-houses. They used copper
(one copper awl and some amorphous lumps of copper were found) and kept
domesticated sheep/goats, though “almost half” the animal bones at Varfolomievka
were of horses. Bone plaques were carved in the shape of horses,
and horse metacarpals were incised with geometric decorations. Three polished
stone mace-head fragments were found here. One was carved into an
animal head at one end, perhaps a horse (figure 9.6). Four graves were dug
rather casually into abandoned house depressions at Varfolomievka, like the
similar group of graves at the edge of Rakushechni Yar. Hundreds of beads
made of drilled and polished horse teeth were deposited in ochre-stained
sacrificial deposits near the human graves. There were also a few deer teeth,
several kinds of shell beads, and whole boars’ tusk ornaments.
These sites in the southern steppes, from the lower Don to the lower
Volga, are dated 5200–4600 BCE and exhibit the bones of sheep/goat and
occasionally cattle, small objects of copper, and casual disposal of the
dead. Small settlements provide most of the data, unlike the cemeterybased
archaeological record for Khvalynsk. Pots were shell-tempered and
188 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 189
decorated with designs incised or pricked with a triangular-ended stick.
Motifs included diamond-like lozenges and, rarely, incised meanders filled
with pricked ornament. Most rims were simple but some were thickened
on the inside. A. Yudin has grouped these sites together under the name of
the Orlovka culture, after the settlement of Orlovka, excavated in 1974, on
the Volga. Nalchik seems to have existed at the southern fringe of this
network.34
The Forest Frontier: The Samara Culture
One other culture interacted with northern Khvalynsk in the middle Volga
region, along the forest-steppe boundary (see figure 9.1). The Samara Neolithic
culture, distinguished by its own variety of “collared” pots covered
with pricked, incised, and rocker-stamped motifs, developed at the northern
edge of the steppe zone along the Samara River. The pottery, tempered
with sand and crushed plants, was similar to that made on the middle Don
River. Dwellings at Gundurovka near Samara had dug-out floors, 20 m by
8 m, with multiple hearths and storage pits in the floors (this settlement
also contained Khvalynsk pottery). Domesticated sheep/goat (13% of 3,602
bones) and cattle (21%) were identified at Ivanovskaya on the upper Samara
River, although 66% of the bones were of horses. The settlement of Vilovatoe
on the Samara River yielded 552 identifiable bones, of which 28.3%
were horse, 19.4% were sheep/goat, and 6.3% were cattle, in addition to
beaver (31.8%) and red deer (12.9%). The Samara culture showed some
forest-culture traits: it had large polished stone adzes like those of forest
foragers to the north.
Samara people created formal cemeteries (figure 9.8). The cemetery at
S’yezzhe (see-YOZH-yay) contained nine burials in an extended position
on their backs, different from the Khvalynsk position and more like that
of DDII. Above the graves at the level of the original ground surface was
a ritual deposit of red ochre, broken pottery, shell beads, a bone harpoon,
and the skulls and lower leg bones (astragali and phalanges) of two
horses—funeral-feast deposits like the above-grave deposits at Khvalynsk.
S’yezzhe had the oldest horse head-and-hoof deposit in the steppes. Near
the horse head-and-hoof deposit, but outside the area of ochre-stained
soil, were two figurines of horses carved on flat pieces of bone, similar to
others found at Varfolomievka, and one bone figurine of a bull. The
S’yezzhe people wore boar’s-tusk plaques like those of the Dnieper-Donets
II culture, one of which was shaped exactly like one found at the DDII
cemetery of Yasinovatka in the Dnieper valley.35
Cows, Social Power, and the Emergence of Tribes
It is impossible to say how much the people buried at Khvalynsk really
knew of the societies of Old Europe, but they certainly were connected by
a trade network of impressive reach. Cemeteries across the Pontic-Caspian
steppes (DDII, Khvalynsk, S’yezzhe, Nalchik) became larger or appeared
for the first time, suggesting the growth of larger, more stable communities.
Bone
Harpoon
0
1
2cm
Bone Plaque
0 1 2 3cm
EXCAVATED AREA
0 1 2 3m
Key
ochre stained
ancient surface
horse head
and hoof
crushed pots grave
Grave 6
Bone Plaque
found along
eroding bank
0 1 2 3cm
Figure 9.8 S’yezzhe cemetery, Samara oblast. Graves 1–9 were a cemetery of
the Samara culture, Early Eneolithic. Graves 10 and 11 were later. After
Vasiliev and Matveeva 1979.
190 Chapter 9
Cows, Copper, and Chiefs 191
Cattle and sheep were important in the diet at some DDII settlements on
the Dnieper River, but farther east they seem initially to have been more
important in funeral rituals than in the daily diet, which was still dominated
by horse meat. In the east, domesticated cattle and sheep seem to
have served as a kind of currency in a new set of rituals and religious
beliefs.
Participation in long-distance trade, gift exchange, and a new set of
cults requiring public sacrifices and feasting became the foundation for a
new kind of social power. Stockbreeding is by nature a volatile economy.
Herders who lose animals always borrow from those who still have them.
The social obligations associated with these loans are institutionalized
among the world’s pastoralists as the basis for a fluid system of status
distinctions. Those who loaned animals acquired power over those who
borrowed them, and those who sponsored feasts obligated their guests.
Early Proto-Indo-European included a vocabulary about verbal contracts
bound by oaths (*h1
óitos-), used in later religious rituals to specify the
obligations between the weak (humans) and the strong (gods). Reflexes
of this root were preserved in Celtic, Germanic, Greek, and Tocharian.
The model of political relations it references probably began in the Eneolithic.
Only a few Eneolithic steppe people wore the elaborate costumes
of tusks, plaques, beads, and rings or carried the stone maces that symbolized
power, but children were included in this exceptional group, suggesting
that the rich animal loaners at least tried to see that their children
inherited their status. Status competition between regional leaders, *weikpotis
or *reģ- in later Proto-Indo-European, resulted in a surprisingly
widespread set of shared status symbols. As leaders acquired followers,
political networks emerged around them—and this was the basis for
tribes.
Societies that did not accept the new herding economy became increasingly
different from those that did. The people of the northern forest zone
remained foragers, as did those who lived in the steppes east of the Ural
Mountains. These frontiers probably were linguistic as well as economic,
given their persistence and clarity. The Pre-Proto-Indo-European language
family probably expanded with the new economy during the Early
Eneolithic in the western steppes. Its sister-to-sister linguistic links may
well have facilitated the spread of stockbreeding and the beliefs that went
with it.
One notable aspect of the Pontic-Caspian Early Eneolithic is the importance
of horses, in both diet and funeral symbolism. Horse meat was a
major part of the meat diet. Images of horses were carved on bone plaques
at Varfolomievka and S’yezzhe. At Khvalynsk, horses were included with
cattle and sheep in funeral rituals that excluded obviously wild animals.
But, zoologically, we cannot say whether they looked very different from
wild horses—the bones no longer exist. The domestication of the horse, an
enormously important event in human history, is not at all well understood.
Recently, however, a new kind of evidence has been obtained
straight from the horse’s mouth.
192 Chapter 9