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Post by Admin on Mar 10, 2022 18:39:35 GMT
THEORIES OF CHANGE
Perhaps the first theories to emerge in the archaeological community to explain these
changes after 4000 BC were those of invasion or influx of people from the outside. Childe early
on in The Danube in Prehistory (1929) had envisioned invaders sweeping into the more civilized
region of the Lower Danube at the end of the Neolithic. He attributed the changes to the Corded
Ware culture. They buried their dead in barrows. “The barrows with corded ware reveal to us a
wandering race of hunters and pastoralists… These conquering battle-axe wielders exerted a
profound influence wherever they went.” (Childe 1929: 158) He proposed that this culture
originally derived from the steppes of Southern Russia and spread out to Northern Europe. “The
cultural community between the barrow builders in Jutland, Thurungia, and South Russia is
undoubted. Recent discoveries have demonstrated the spread of elements from South Russia
westward in a manner that does not permit a reversal.” (Childe 1929: 159). The Aegean plan of
the chamber-tomb, he said, was derived from the ‘catacomb graves’ of the Don basin. The
Battle Axe culture would also be derived from them. At the time, the norm was to place the
homeland of the speakers of the Indo-European languages as being the Corded Ware culture,
which was thought to ultimately derive from Northern Europe. However, Childe was the first to
propose that these original Indo-Europeans may have come from the steppes. His model would
have them first migrating up the Danube and from there into Central and ultimately Northern
European.
In his chapter on Copper Age Hungry Childe also sees intrusive elements on the
Hungarian Plain with barrows that are strikingly similar to the Copper Age ochre-graves of the
South Russian steppes. “If we regard the barrows in question as monuments of nomad invaders
from the east who introduced the copper battle-axe (axe adze), we should have to assume that the
use of large quantities of red ochre noted in some graves of Danubian II type east of the Tisza
was due to invaders. But of course the process is reversible. Nevertheless the barrows in
question do indubitably attest relations between the Hungarian plain and South Russia across the
Carpathians one way or another.” (Childe 1929: 207). Childe does not reach the conclusion that
this intrusive element could be related to the collapse of the Copper Age civilizations mostly
because the evidence that there was a collapse had not been discovered yet.
THE ‘KURGAN’ AND INVASION THEORY
It was understood by many since the 19th century that large-scale migrations must have
been the origin of such a widespread linguistic group such as Indo-European which, by the IronAge, spread from Ireland to India, only held at bay in the south in the Near East by the spread of
the nomadic Semitic tribes. Linguists had wanted to favor the Pontic Steppes as the probable
homeland as early as Schrader (1890) and it was V.G Childe, as we saw, was the first to accrue
archaeological evidence for such a diffusion and gave the credit to the Pit-Grave (Yamnaya)
culture in the Ukraine (Childe, 1929). He saw the connections between the appearance of the
“ochre graves” burials in Eastern and Central Europe with the western migration of the “most
ancient equestrian nomadic fold of Pontus” (1929: 138). Childe later (1950:41) admitted that the
concept of a unified Corded-Ware-Battle-Axe-Tumulus Burial complex with a single culture
origin was hard to prove without a shadow of a doubt. Nevertheless, Central and Eastern
European archaeologists continued to turn up evidence for steppe influences and migrations at
the dawn of the Bronze Age (Anthony 1986: 291). It was Marija Gimbutas who constructed the
picture of the “Kurgan Culture” that has become the standard theory of Indo-European origins
upon which most archaeologists and linguists accept even though the true credit should perhaps
go to Childe. But it was this theory and Gimbutas’ models for expansion that begin to explain
the great changes that fell upon much of Eastern and Central Europe at the terminus of the
Chalcolithic that we see now and are of concern here.
In 1956 Gimbutas introduced the name “Kurgan culture” to supplant six or more other
labels used for the same culture or its branches such as: the “Pit-grave culture” (Yamnaya),
“Ochre-grave culture”, “Battle-axe culture”, “Corded-ware culture”, “Single-grave culture”, etc.
She equates this culture as the “Proto-Indo-European” culture. Gimbutas later recognized that
the “Kurgan culture” is perhaps not what most archaeologists would call an archaeological
‘culture’ and she began to use the term “Kurgan tradition’ (1977: 278). Its material remains are
scanty apart from the kurgans themselves (kurgan being the Slavic and Turkic word for barrow).
They left scarce evidence from their homeland in the Pontic steppes of any settlements due to
their pastoral economy. However, the important site of Derievka on the lower Dnieper occupied
an area of 2000 sq. meters and contains some of the earliest evidence of domesticated horses
from around 4400 BC. This culture is the Sredny-Stog culture from a period Gimbutas (1966:
484) labels as Kurgan I. The Sredny Stog were the direct antecedent of the Yamnaya. The
discovery of horse bones in the habitation sites of Cuceteni A, Gumelnita and Tiszapolgar
cultures indicates that in the second half of the fifth millennium domesticated horse was known
to the people of east central Europe and the Balkans down to Macedonia (Bokonyi, 1978). This
suggests that cultural contacts between the steppes and our Chalcolithic cultures were strong and
that the practice of horse keeping spread quickly and sooner than the migrations. At about the
same time horse head figurines carved out of hard stone, presumably scepter heads appear in the
Lower Danube probably as part of an elite exchange system. Kurgan hill-fort sites were placed
on steep river banks, usually on promontories. They were heavily fortified with stone walls
Gimbutas (1966) says these were prototypes of Baden hill-fort types and of Bronze Age
Mycenean Greek, Monteoru, Vatya, Unetician, Urnfield, and other fortified European sites. She
says that hill-orts with royal houses and living quarters for the ruling class are an Indo-European
characteristic (Gimbutas 1966: 484).
Gimbutas enthusiastically labeled these Kurgan people as a destructive warlike people
who came into Europe upon the largely peaceful “Old European” Chalcolithic and Neolithic
cultures in Europe. They were also a patriarchal and male-dominated society with its strong
warrior caste and predominance of male deities that wielded weapons. The Kurgans represented
a burial cult that emphasized the role of the warrior chieftain, his horse and livestock, drinking
cups (possibly milk or beer) and weapons. Successive waves of horse and chariot riding warriors
over the ensuing Bronze and Iron ages would carry branches of this cultural complex over
enormous distances nearly over every corner of Europe, into Anatolia, Syria, Central Asia, Iran,
and northern India. However, evidence of any sort of cultural unity between such disparate
groups is mostly linguistic. Also seen as evidence by Gimbutas and Mallory are the similarities
in religion and deities between many Indo-European cultures. Some similarities in material
culture between adjacent groups exist, such as grey ware ceramics common at early Indo-Aryan
and Indo-Iranian contexts in northern India, Afghanistan, Turkestan, and northern Iran
suggesting homology. Historical records from the Near East and the Vedas of India attest to the
intrusive nature of the Indo-European groups such as the Hittites, Luwians, Mitanni, Iranians,
Armenians, and Indo-Aryans (Malory, 1989).
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Post by Admin on Mar 10, 2022 19:39:24 GMT
In 1963, in her article entitled “Indo-Europeans- archaeological problems”, Gimbutas
places the Kurgan culture farther east, stretching from the Volga River to the Altai Mountains
and south of the Aral Sea – not in the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea where she said an
entirely different culture lived. This North Pontic or Mariupol Culture had collective graves in
long trenches. Wheeled vehicles and the horse had not been evidenced she says, then, but we
now know they were. It was in the east beyond the Volga and in central Asia that “horsebreeding must have first occurred.” (Gimbutas 1963: 820). And it was in this large area that we find the single grave kurgans that must be evidence of the Indo-European homeland.
Soon after the middle of the third millennium Kurgan sites appeared north of the Black Sea and so this must
be when the Kurgan people began to move and the “local North Pontic culture disintegrated; the
Kurgan culture became dominant, although many elements were taken over from the local North
Pontic (Mariupol) culture… The long-lasting North Pontic culture was the first victim of the
invasion of the eastern steppe people.” (821). This first incursion occurred ca. 2400-2300 B.C.
on the basis of typological comparisons with eastern central Europe (Gimbutas 1961).
Then around 2400-2200 B.C. Kurgan elements (barrows, pit-graves with skeletons lying
on back with legs contracted upwards, ochre depostis, stone maceheads, horse-head figurines
made of precious stone, battle-axes, unpainted incised and stamped or cord-impressed pottery,
ect.) appeared in Transylvania, northern Yugoslavia, and northeastern Hungary, and along the
western coasts of the Black Sea, in the western Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria. (1963: 823).
“The earliest finds of Kurgan appearance have proved to be contemporaneous with the
Bodrogkeresztur culture in Hungary and western Romania, with the Tripolye culture in eastern
Romania (Moldavia) and western Ukraine, and with the last phase of the Gumelnita and Salcuta
cultural groups in central and southern Romania and Bulgaria. This wave of southward
expansion, she says, is probably connected with the layers of destruction in Greece at the end of
the Early Heladic II period, ca. 2300-2200 BC. She also sees simultaneous changes in western
Anatolia such as at Troy, where new elements appeared in the middle of Troy II period such as
wood beam construction in place of traditional mud-brick. She says the invaders would also
have traveled by sea, such as colonizing the Aegean. “Only in the western half of the peninsula
can the persistence of the local cultures be traced” (Gimbutas 1963: 825). At the end of the 15th
century BC, the “Tumulus” culture had expanded all over the Middle Danube area. Gimbutas’
dates from these articles in the early 1960’s were uncalibrated and far too late.
In 1977 Gimbutas published an article entitled “The first wave of Eurasian steppe
pastoralists into Copper Age Europe” in which she pushes the date of the first incursion wave
back two millennia from her previous (1963) dates. She identifies three such “waves” of the
“Kurgan people”. The radiocarbon dates she has relied on were calibrated to dendrochronology.
(She notes that her old chronology was revised in 1966). According to her the first wave
occurred at 4400-4300 B.C. yet most researchers had been focusing on the third wave which
occurred at 3000-2800. She identifies the Kurgan I culture as the early Sredni-Stog, which was
east of the Dnieper but west of the Volga. Her motive and means she gives for their emergence
from the steppes was their mastering of the horse in the 5th millennium (Gimbutas 1977: 281).
The domestication of the horse, she says, seems to have prompted a dis-equilibrium between the
supply of grazing land in the south Russian steppes and the dietary demand of rapidly increasing
herds. The zones west of the Black sea already under cultivation would have appealed to the
Kurgans as ideal pasturage.
The problem with identifying the Sredni-Stog with “Kurgan I-II” is that Sredni Stog
burials are usually placed with few or no grave goods and were flat. To explain this Gimbutas
has said that most Sredni Stog graves originally had mounds that have since been plowed down.
But as Anthony (1986) mentions, most former Soviet archaeologists do not support this
interpretation. “The Sredni Stog culture, does, however, exhibit the early stages in the evolution
of permanent surface markers over exceptional graves. Small cairns made of stone cobbles, with
a standing stone set into them, occur over some graves even in the earliest period.” (Anthony
1986: 296). Anthony also thinks that the development of permanent mortuary rites with highly
visible surface markers over the graves of prominent community leaders or of members of their
families could have been related to increased territorial competition and boundary maintenance
in the region.
For Gimbutas, the first repercussions of the initial wave were felt in the area north of the
Sea of Azov and the Dnieper rapids region. The Kurgan people must have been coming from the
east. There in the Dneiper area, the Kurgans partially assimilated the Dnieper-Donets population
of herders and fishers where they formed the hybrid “Sredni-Stog” culture. (Few Soviet
archaeologists supported this position of the Sredni Stog as evolving out of a migration from
further east but rather evolved from the Dnieper-Donets Neolithic population). While some
pastoralists settled in the lower Dnieper area, others pushed on into Romania, Bulgaria, and
eastern Hungary. This Kurgan penetration of Europe is dated to c. 4400-4300 B.C., on the basis
of Kurgan graves and pottery that are synchronous to Cucuteni A2-A3 and Karanovo VI
(Gumelnitsa) phases. (284). “Whereas the ratio of male/female burials are fairly equal in Old
Europe, early Kurgan graves are almost exclusively male. A warrior consciousness previously
unknown in Old Europe is evidenced in equipment recovered from Kurgan graves: bows and
arrows, spears, cutting and thrusting knives, antler-axes, and horse bones.” (Gimbutas 1977: 284)
Horse-headed stone scepters become common items found in tombs in the West Balkans such as
Casimcea and Suvorovo, in the Danube Delta. The first wave theoretically had a much broader
region than that covered later by the second.
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Post by Admin on Mar 10, 2022 22:03:46 GMT
Gimbutas says that the Cucutenian civilization survived the Kurgan penetrations longer
than the Old European cultures to the south and west. There was more coexistence. Kurgan type
potsherds ranged from 1-10 percent of the total from Cucteni A and AB phases. “It is presumed
the large Cuctenian communities – sometimes containing more than 1000 houses within 300-400
acres- could not be easily overtaken.” (287). But the development of defensive mechanisms at
the time shows an increasing anxiety of intruders (Florescu 1969). Anthony (1986) suggests that
the mushrooming in size of some of the Cuceteni settlements of the late Chalcolithic was for
defensive purposes. The situation was quite different for the Karanovo farmers who lived in
much smaller, denser populations in unfortified settlements. They were pushed or fled from their
homelands in southern Moldavia, Dobruja, the lower Danube region, and the Marica valley in
Bulgaria to the west (Morintz and Roman 1968; Roman 1971). The Salcuta branch in western
Romania settled in caves. The dislocation of the Karanovo was the first link in a chain reaction
of population shifts throughout the Balkans though Gimbutas doesn’t provide solid evidence of
this, only a schematic diagram (Gimbutas 1977: 326).
The Cernavoda I complex that emerged in the lower Danube signals a rather abrupt
termination of the rich, complex Gumelnita culture. It was a mixture of northwestern steppe
elements and the Karanovo (Gumelnitsa) substratum. “It has been determined that Karanovo and
Cernavoda are not generically related because none of the tells previously occupied by Karanovo
people show traces of cultural continuity with the Cernavoda I culture.” (Gimbutas 1977: 291).
Cernovoda sites were usually strategically located on high Danube terraces or on spurs of the
river (Morintz and Roman 1968). Houses were semi-subterranean with hearths and timber posts
that supported roofs. Pottery decoration was by cord impressions, stabbing and dragging, nail
and shell impressions, and rows of knobs (beaded decoration”) forming a solar design around the
mouth. Painted pottery is non-existent. The pottery was untempered, occasionally brown
slipped, and burnished in the Karanovo tradition. Old European symbolic designs and
representations of deities or worshipers seem to have vanished with the exception of three
schematic figurines from the settlement of Cernavoda I (1977: 291). Its characteristic defensive
hilltop settlements, pottery, and burials bear a clear resemblance to those found further east on
the southern Russian steppes.
The second Kurgan wave “definitively shaped ethnic configurations in Europe.” (1977:
292) The 2nd Wave of Kurgan invaders headed south from the North Pontic region across
Dobruja towards the lower Danube area, apparently not without resistance from the populace of
Cernavoda I (the Kurganized complex in the wake of Wave 1). This resulted in the Cernavoda
III culture. This culture, she assumes, was essentially the same as the Boleraz in western
Slovakia, and the Baden in the middle Danube; they came from the same cultural substrate,
(Kurgan wave II), and probably spoke a similar dialects. Radiocarbon dates from the second
phase of the hill give the same age as at Usatovo, c. 3400-3200 B.C. By that time, a chain of
acropolises and tumuli along the Danube, in the Marica (Bulgaria) plain, and in the north of the
Aegean (Sitagroi), reflect the spread of Kurgan domination of Old Europe (Gimbutas 1980: 282).
Western Anatolia was also infiltrated at this time. In the lower Danube, Marica, and Macedonian
plains, many Karanovo tells were surmounted by hillforts (such as Ezero, Sitagroi, Karanovo
VII, Nova Zagora, Veselinovo, and Bikovo). In other areas, steep riverbanks and promontories
were selected as seats of the ruling class. “The new lords seem to have successfully eliminated
or changed whatever remained of the old social system after the first patriarchal (wave #1)
incursion. Hill-forts were the foci of power and cultural life. The surrounding area supported
either pastoral or agricultural populations (depending on the substratum). Their villages were
small, the houses usually semi-subterranean, a pattern unknown to Old Europe. But in economy
and religion, amalgamation of the Old European and the Kurgan culture is clearly evident”
(Gimbutas 1980: 282).
This second wave would have been the product of the North Pontic early Yamnaya &
Maiykop Culture situated around the lower Volga. This was the solidified “Kurgan” and
therefore, proto-Indo-European cultural complex. It is here we find the first true kurgan tumuli.
The Yamnaya succeeded the Sredni-Stog culture. It had close ties with the Maiykop culture in
the northern Caucasus region and southern Ural cultures, who themselves became “kurganized”.
Anthony (1986) does not refer to the Yamnaya as a specific culture but a “horizon” that
represents the diffusion of an economy, not of a unified cultural complex. It shared a broad
ceramic tradition, represented by many regional ceramic types, and a broadly shared mortuary
tradition with various forms of tumulus burial. The members of this horizon would likely have
spoken similar, related languages, if not the same one. It is the Yamnaya, and their contacts with
the trans-Caucasus cultures that first brought the wheel to the steppes around 3100 BC (Telegin
1977: 11). It was likely this development that was the catalyst for this “second wave” of Kurgan
peoples to both the west and east (according to the theory). However, more recently, the earliest
evidence for four-wheeled vehicles in Europe occurs at Flintbek in northern Germany and at
Bronocice in southern Poland and dates to about 3500-3400 BC (Zich 1993, Milisaukas and
Kruk 1982). Anthony (1986) says that much of the apparent diffusion of the horizon might well
represent only the adoption of a new way of life by a diverse array of local populations, much as
the American Plains “horse complex” was adopted across the North American Plains after the
introduction of the horse.
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Post by Admin on Mar 11, 2022 1:17:31 GMT
There would have been a mixed population. Some evidence for this Gimbutas presents
from Baden contexts near Budapest in which a people of the “Proto-European C” (steppe) type
(almost identical to the west Siberian “Andronovo” type) coexisted with a “mixed
Mediterranean” type with brachymorphic components (Gimbutas 1977: 293). Yet the cultural
uniformity, Gimbutas says, was “without precedent.” This evidence is based on analysis of
skeletal materials from two cemeteries: Alsonemedi and Budakalasz, famous for its small clay
effigy of a four-wheeled vehicle (Nemeskéri in Banner 1956). Graves continue to show close
links with those from the steppes.
The construction of large heavily fortified acropoleis in the Danubian basin such as at
Ezero established the Kurgan domination of Old Europe. The widespread settlement hiatus and
abandonment seen during the mid-fourth millennium, Gimbutas believes, would have been due
to this dispersion caused by the even more powerful 2nd wave. The Ezero culture was part of a
large cultural complex called the “Balkan-Danubian complex” that stretched up the entire length
of the Danube and included the Ezero, Cenavoda, Baden, Globular Amphora, Cotoferni, Foltesti,
and even Troy cultures that were characterized by similar pottery and the hill-forts. It now
seems that the Trojans most likely spoke Luwian, an Indo-Europeans language (Watkins, 1994).
These cultures were an amalgamation in progress of two cultural systems with contrasting
economies, ideologies, ethnicities – the recently arrived Kurgan conquerors and an Old European
people. Farming carried on intact but the settlements became more dispersed and seasonal
although some permanent settlements did survive. These acropoli were protected by massive
stone walls with corridor shaped gates, as at Ezero. Houses line parallel streets. In contrast to
preceding Chalcolithic cultures such as Karanovo and Gumelnitsa, with no evidence of palatial
structures, the hill-forts had large structures presumably for the chief, which contained enormous
amounts of grain stored in pithoi (293). Subsequently, in the first half of the third millennium
B.C., these “royal houses” as Gimbutas calls them, were large 13-15 m in length with apsidal
ends (at Sitagroi: Renfrew 1970c; at Ezero: Merpert and Georgiev 1973; at Vučedol: Schmidt
1945).
Pastoralism in the economy increased. In faunal remains of Cernavoda III settlements we
find a much higher amount of domesticated animal remains than before. Gimbutas envisions
them becoming the focus of cults, which reflects their economic importance. This accounts for
the dispersed settlement pattern we see at the beginning of the Bronze Age as mobility and
transhumance became more important. Throughout the Balkan-Danubian complex we see
evidence of animal and human sacrifice together in the same pit. Gimbutas sees a “complete
congruence between the burial rites of the Globular Amphora people and those of the Kurgans of
Mijkhajlovka I stage of the Maykop culture in the North Pontic region: mortuary houses built of
stone slabs, cromlechs, and stone stelae, engravings on stone slabs, ritual burial of horses, cattle,
and dogs; also human sacrifice in connection with funeral rites honoring high-ranking males”
(Gimbutas 1980: 292). Human sacrifice is evidenced in Cernavoda III graves containing several
skulls of children and pits yielding dozens of skeletons showing signs of mass immolation.
“These particular forms of human sacrifice are unknown in Old Europe, but are typical of
Kurgan I-II graves in the Pontic and Volga steppe.” (Gimbutas 1977: 293).
The 2nd wave would have been responsible for introducing arsenical and tin bronze into
the Old European pure copper metallurgy (Gimbutas 1980: 275). The metallurgic techniques as
well as the shapes of tools and weapons were most probably acquired in Transcaucasia when the
Kurgan people settled in the Kura and Araxes Valley c. the middle of the fourth millennium BC
(Gimbutas 1973). The Kurgans seen here, such as at Maykop, were probably not built by
ethnically steppe people but a people who spoke an early Cauacasian people who adopted this
burial practice. She says (1980: 275) that by this stage the complex of the North Pontic region
had diverged from its Kurgan cousin of the Volga-Urals, for the Kurgan elements that appear
west of the Black Sea are clearly connected with the North Pontic, not with the Volga steppe and
beyond. This 2nd wave she dates to c. 3400-3200 B.C. The Yamnaya and Maykop people
maintained close links. They both used kurgan burials, with their dead in a supine position with
raised knees and oriented in a north-east/south-west axis. Graves were sparkled with red ochre
on the floor, and sacrificed domestic animals buried alongside humans. They also both had in
common horse riding, wagons, a cattle-and sheep based economy, the use of copper-bronze axes
(both hammer axes and sleeved axes ) and tanged daggers. In fact, the oldest wagons and bronze
artifacts are found in the North Caucasus. The world’s oldest sword was found at a late Maykop
grave in Klady kurgan 31.
A Third Wave (3000-2800) is thought to come from the late Yamnaya phase on the
steppes moving north and coincides the appearance of the Corded Ware culture of the North
European Plain. Around 2900-2800 BC the earliest Corded Ware pottery and burials appeared in
the Carpathian foothills in southeastern Poland (Milisaukas and Kruk 2011). This cultural
horizon extended from the Rhine to the Upper Volga River, from Finland to the Alps and the
Carpathians. Since mounds, cord-ornamented pottery, battle axes, red ocher in burials occur in
the Corded Ware culture and the Pit-Grave (Yamnaya) culture of the southern Ukraine and
Russian steppes, it is believed the former is descended from the latter. However, this hypothesis
has some problems because some Corded Ware traits are found in the earlier Neolithic cultures
of central and Eastern Europe.
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Post by Admin on Mar 11, 2022 18:31:57 GMT
Gimbutas’ “waves” do not mean a transplantation of the Eurasian steppe culture west of
the Black Sea in toto; the process was more complex, involving the coexistence of different
cultural traditions, dislocations of population, subjugations by a warrior nobility, and cultural
amalgamations (1977: 280). She does believe that ideologically the egalitarian and matriarchal
societies of “Old Europe” were transplanted by warlike, patriarchal, and caste based society.
Actually the evidence from the Chalcolithic societies such as the Gumelnitsa and Varna cultures
especially suggest that they were not egalitarian and that there was indeed a beginning of social
elites and there is no strong evidence that they were matriarchal per se. As shown above, the
most grave goods, especially precious metals, were unevenly found with men. She bases this
assumption largely on the figurine assemblage from these Balkan cultures that do show large
ratio of female forms (Gimbutas, 1974). Gimbutas bases her assumption that they were peaceful
on the lack of evidence of weapons, or weapon/warrior imagery. The shaft hole copper axes so
common in the Chalcolithic could have doubled as weapons but were more likely produced for
clearing forests for agriculture as opposed to the clearly aggressive nature of the Kurgan battleaxes and daggers.
The facts are these. Around 4200 BCE herders who probably came from the Dnieper
valley appeared on the northern edge of the Danube Delta in the area occupied at the time by the
farming Bolgrad culture of ‘Old Europe’. These migrants built kurgan graves and carried maces
with stone heads shaped like horse heads. These objects then began appearing in the towns of
Old Europe. They acquired copper either by trade or loot from the Lower Danube towns, most
of which made its way back to the steppes of the Lower Dnieper but some were buried with the
wealthy elites in the kurgans. The steppe culture involved in this migration has been labeled the
Suvorovo culture named after cluster of graves near the Danube delta is the Suvorovo group.
These are identical to those of the Novodanilovka group back along the Dnieper and so the
complex is named the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka (Figure 7). They probably just represent the
chiefly elites of the Srendi Stog culture since their burials and lithics are identical. There are
about thirty-five to forty cemeteries assigned to the complex, most containing fewer than ten
graves. Anthony (2007: 251) says that the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka elite were involved in
raiding and trading with the lower Danube valley during the Tripolye B1 period, just before the
collapse of Old Europe.
These Suvorovo graves of the Danube delta were always marked by a mound, or kurgan,
as markers on this new frontier land or possible as an imitation of the mounded tells. Suvorovo
kurgans were some of the first erected in the steppes. Those of the Novodanilovka were usually
marked by a pile of stones above the burial or single large stone surrounded by a stone lined ring,
or cromlech. The grave pit was usually rectangular but sometimes oval with the Srendi Stog
posture, on the back with the knees raised. The copper from these graves helps to date them.
The trace elements in the copper from Ciurgiulești and Suvorovo in the lower Danube indicate
that they were from the mines in Burlgaria that were still in production before the collapse, and
so before 4000 BCE.
Gimbutas did not believe that the Kurgan people exterminated the endemic populations
of Europe, but the archaeology shows a coexistence of different cultural elements, a
hybridization, a gradual disappearance of local elements (Gimbutas 1963: 827). Her model of
dispersal into Southeast Europe by following the Danube Valley into Central Europe is the most
likely considering the mobile steppe people would have used the already de-forested lands used
by the agriculturalists as the easiest path. Also at this time they were a more sedentary people as
evidenced by the remains of pigs, which does not suggest a people on the move a lot. Nor did
they bury their dead under mounds but rather simple pits. The succeeding Yamnaya people do
seem to fit the truly pastoral description with mound burials and are a more likely candidate for
an invasion. Anthony (2007) stated that it was likely the introduction or invention of the wheel
in the North Pontic region that allowed the people to move out of their riverine environments
into the open steppe. Even if the migrations didn’t take place in 3 distinct waves but more a
gradual succession of movements, the evidence for the introduction of new people into the area
is strong.
In studying pit-graves in Eastern Hungary, Ecsedy (1979) concludes that the burials such
as Csongrad, “have preserved the heritage of a community of undoubtedly steppe origin that
arrived at the Tisza region most probably at the very end of the Tiszapolgár culture or
immediately after it.” (1979: 12). Its appearance is directly connected to the spread of “scepters”
dated from the end of the Cuceteni A period and Srednii-Stog II or roughly 4100 BC. He also
mentions that, from an anthropological point of view the Csongrad grave is related to the
Srednii-Stog II – early Yamnaya physical type and shows no affinity with either the
Bodrogkeresztur, native to Hungary at the time, or the Early Bronze Age Baden culture. The
males have a “Cro-Magnon, Nordic-A appearance, or Proto-Europid. He goes on to state that
while this is true of the male burials, often the female burials are markedly different, resembling
more the local population, with a more Mediterranean component (1979: 46). Escedy did not
believe that the early migrations should be considered invasions. This first penetration of the
steppe population groups to Moldavia, the Lower Danube region, Transylvania and the Tisza
region took place at the time of prosperity of the Copper Age cultures there. These movements
and minor migrations were based on interrelations and exchange of goods between the two
economically different regions. “This early movement from the steppe could not be so strong as
to cause a break in local development.” (1979: 13). And so concerning the eventual collapse of
the Copper Age cultures, Ecsedy leaves the question open and does not take any stance – “We
have no right to assume that the relationships, apparently existing at the time of the emergence of
the Yamnaya culture, i.e. in the Tiszapolgar-Bodrogkeresztúr period, did not continue until the
final phase of the Baden culture, nor do we have the right to assume a flood-like, enormous
penetration overwhelming the local Copper Age population.” (1979: 47). He also says that it is
difficult to ascribe the social differences of the Early Bronze Age and the emergence of
“citadels” to the influence of the steppeans (1979: 58).
Pató and Barczi (2011) link the start of the “migration of the nomad stock breeders from
the eastern steppe” as beginning around 4200-4100 with an effect of the climatic deterioration
called the Piora-oscillation, “presumably” (2011: 80). This climatic event will be mentioned
again later in this essay. The paleo-ecological samples from the Alpine glaciers reveal that the
winters became more and more cold. This is also seen in the decline of oak forests in Germany
around 3700 BC, they say. And so, they have suggested, like Gimbutas, that climate change may
have spurred the migrations from the drier steppe region.
Numerous other archaeologists and scholars such as J.P Malory have accepted the
Kurgan theory or tried to tackle the “Indo-European problem” and modify it (Anthony 1986,
2007; Malory 1976, 1989; Renfrew 1987; A. & S. Sheratt, 1988; Telegin 1986). A modified
form of this theory by JP Mallory (1989) maintains the date of the migrations to around 3500 BC
but puts less insistence on their violent, quasi-military nature. However, this date appears to be
too late to account for the first signs of change in the Balkans. It remains the most widely held
view of the Proto-Indo-European homeland and migrations. Indeed, an entire journal, The
Journal of Indo-European Studies is still published every three months to study the archaeology,
ideology, and linguistics of this immense geographic and temporal phenomenon.
Anthony (2007: 239) sees possible increasing conflicts coinciding with the use of the
horse in livestock raiding. Reasons for these raids were tied with what he sees as Proto-IndoEuropean initiation rituals that required boys to go out and raid their enemies “like a pack of
dogs”. This he assumes based on this ubiquitous ritual among the historical Indo-European
cultures. Cattle, sheep, and horses were also valuable as proper gifts to the gods at funerals.
When bride-prices increased due to the elites adopting the same symbols of status (maces with
polished stone heads, boar’s tusk plaques, copper rings and pendants) across large regions also
made cross-border raiding almost inevitable. If these raiders were mounted they could have
covered hundreds of kilometers across the steppes to prey on the sedentary populations in the
Lower Danube and flee with little risk of being caught. “A cycle of warfare evolving from
thieving to revenge raids probably contributed to the collapse of the tell towns of the Danube
valley.” (Anthony 2007: 239)
The invasion from the steppe theory remains a widely accepted explanation for late
Eneolithic/Early Bronze Age culture change in the Black Sea region (Anthony et. al, 1986: 292).
Gimbutas maintains (1980: 310) that the archaeological evidence of the sudden transformations
of the “Old European culture” cannot be explained as a product of continuous socio-economic
and religious development. Still, over the past 30 years or so, the topic has largely gone out of
style. Many refuse to accept a purely migration or invasion cause of cultural change in favor of
more processual theories and attempts to perhaps combine the two.
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