Sintashta culture

The formative Sintashta-Petrovka culture is shown in red on this map. The maximum extent of the Andronovo culture is in orange. The location of the earliest spoke-wheeled chariot finds is indicated in magenta. Adjacent and overlapping cultures (Afanasevo culture, Srubna culture, BMAC) are shown in olive green.

The Sintashta culture, also known as the Sintashta-Petrovka culture^[1] or Sintashta-Arkaim culture,^[2] is a Bronze Age archaeological culture of the northern Eurasian steppe on the borders of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, dated to the period 2100–1800 BCE.^[3] The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an important role in ancient warfare.^[4] Sintashta settlements are also remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy carried out there, which is unusual for a steppe culture.^[5]

Because of the difficulty of identifying the remains of Sintashta sites beneath those of later settlements, the culture was only recently distinguished from the Andronovo culture.^[2] It is now recognised as a separate entity forming part of the 'Andronovo horizon'.^[1]

Origin and spread

The Sintashta culture emerged from the interaction of two antecedent cultures. Its immediate predecessor in the Ural-Tobol steppe was the Poltavka culture, an offshoot of the cattle-herding Yamnaya horizon that moved east into the region between 2800 and 2600 BCE. Several Sintashta towns were built over older Poltovka settlements or close to Poltovka cemeteries, and Poltovka motifs are common on Sintashta pottery. Sintashta material culture also shows the influence of the late Abashevo culture, a collection of Corded Ware settlements in the forest steppe zone north of the Sintashta region that were also predominantly pastoralist.^[6] The first Sintashta settlements appeared around 2100 BCE, during a period of climatic change that saw the already arid Kazakh steppe region become even more cold and dry. The marshy lowlands around the Ural and upper Tobol rivers, previously favoured as winter refuges, became increasingly important for survival. Under these pressures both Poltovka and Abashevo herders settled permanently in river valley strongholds, eschewing more defensible hill-top locations.^[7]

The Abashevo culture was already marked by endemic intertribal warfare;^[8] intensified by ecological stress and competition for resources in the Sintashta period, this drove the construction of fortifications on an unprecedented scale and innovations in military technique such as the invention of the war chariot. Increased competition between tribal groups may also explain the extravagant sacrifices seen in Sintashta burials, as rivals sought to outdo one another in acts of conspicuous consumption analogous to the North American potlatch tradition.^[7] Sintashta artefact types such as spearheads, trilobed arrowheads, chisels, and large shaft-hole axes were taken east.^[9]

Metal production

The Sintashta economy came to revolve around copper metallurgy. Copper ores from nearby mines (such as Vorovskaya Yama) were taken to Sintashta settlements to be processed into copper and arsenical bronze. This occurred on an industrial scale: all the excavated buildings at the Sintashta sites of Sintashta, Arkaim and Ust'e contained the remains of smelting ovens and slag.^[7] Much of this metal was destined for export to the cities of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) in Central Asia. The metal trade between Sintashta and the BMAC for the first time connected the steppe region to the ancient urban civilisations of the Near East: the empires and city-states of Iran and Mesopotamia provided an almost bottomless market for metals. These trade routes later became the vehicle through which horses, chariots and ultimately Indo-Iranian-speaking people entered the Near East from the steppe.^[10][11]

Ethnic and linguistic identity

The people of the Sintashta culture are thought to have spoken Proto-Indo-Iranian, the ancestor of the Indo-Iranian language family. This identification is based primarily on similarities between sections of the Rig Veda, an Indian religious text which includes ancient Indo-Iranian hymns recorded in Vedic Sanskrit, with the funerary rituals of the Sintashta culture as revealed by archaeology.^[12] There is however linguistic evidence of a list of common vocabulary between Finno-Ugric and Indo-Iranian languages. While its origin as a creole of different tribes in the Ural region may make it inaccurate to ascribe the Sintashta culture exclusively to Indo-Iranian ethnicity, interpreting this culture as a blend of two cultures with two distinct languages is a reasonable hypothesis based on the evidence.^[13]

Genetics

In a study published on 11 June 2015,^[14] several individuals of the Sintashta culture could be surveyed, including two males from whom Y chromosomes could be isolated. Extractions from both of the males (from two different cemeteries) were determined to be of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a1. Extractions of mtDNA from five individuals were determined to represent two samples of haplogroup U2e, one sample of haplogroup J1, one sample of J2 and one sample of N1a. The list of individuals:

• Bulanovo cemetery:
  • sample RISE386, male - Y-DNA R1a1a1b2a2 and mtDNA J1c1b1a
  • sample RISE394, female - mtDNA U2e1e
• Stepnoe VII cemetery:
  • sample RISE392, male - Y-DNA R1a1a1b2a2a and mtDNA J2b1a2a
• Tanabergen II cemetery:
  • sample RISE391, female - mtDNA N1a1a1a1
• Bol'shekaraganskii cemetery:
  • sample RISE395, female - mtDNA U2e1h

Allentoft et al. (2015) also found close autosomal genetic relationship between peoples of Corded Ware culture and Sintashta culture:

The close affinity we observe between peoples of Corded Ware and Sintashta cultures [...] suggests similar genetic sources of the two, which contrasts with previous hypotheses placing the origin of Sintashta in Asia or the Middle East. Although we cannot formally test whether the Sintashta derives directly from an eastward migration of Corded Ware peoples or if they share common ancestry with an earlier steppe population, the presence of European Neolithic farmer ancestry in both the Corded Ware and the Sintashta, combined with the absence of Neolithic farmer ancestry in the earlier Yamnaya, would suggest the former being more probable.^[14]

See also

• Sintashta
• Arkaim
• Petrovka settlement
• Country of Towns
• Cimmerians

Notes

References

• Anthony, D. W. (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-05887-0. 
• Anthony, D. W. (2009). "The Sintashta Genesis: The Roles of Climate Change, Warfare, and Long-Distance Trade". In Hanks, B.; Linduff, K. Social Complexity in Prehistoric Eurasia: Monuments, Metals, and Mobility. Cambridge University Press. pp. 47–73. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511605376.005. ISBN 978-0-511-60537-6. 
• Hanks, B.; Linduff, K. (2009). "Late Prehistoric Mining, Metallurgy, and Social Organization in North Central Eurasia". In Hanks, B.; Linduff, K. Social Complexity in Prehistoric Eurasia: Monuments, Metals, and Mobility. Cambridge University Press. pp. 47–73. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511605376.005. ISBN 978-0-511-60537-6. 
• Koryakova, L. (1998a). "Sintashta-Arkaim Culture". The Center for the Study of the Eurasian Nomads (CSEN). Retrieved 16 September 2010. 
• Koryakova, L. (1998b). "An Overview of the Andronovo Culture: Late Bronze Age Indo-Iranians in Central Asia". The Center for the Study of the Eurasian Nomads (CSEN). Retrieved 16 September 2010. 
• Kuznetsov, P. F. (2006). "The emergence of Bronze Age chariots in eastern Europe". Antiquity 80 (309): 638–645. 
• Kuz'mina, E. E. (2007). Mallory, J. P., ed. The Origin of the Indo-Iranians. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-16054-5. 

External links

• Stanislav A. Grigoriev, "Ancient Indo-Europeans", ISBN 5-88521-151-5