Studies on the Peoples and Cultures of the Eurasian Steppes

International interest in the prehistory and archaeology of the Eurasian steppes and Mongolia has increased dramatically since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This article surveys important new evidence and interpretations that have emerged from several collaborative projects in the past two decades. A particular emphasis is placed on issues that are crucial to regional studies in the steppe ecological zone; however, it also is suggested that steppe prehistory must come to play a more significant role in developing more comprehensive understandings of world prehistory. Key developments connected with the steppe include the diffusion of anatomically modern humans, horse domestication, spoke-wheeled chariot and cavalry warfare, early metal production and trade, Indo-European languages, and the rise of nomadic states and empires. In addition to these important issues, thoughts are offered on some of the current challenges that face archaeological scholarship in this region of the world.

World …, 2010

Conference: Union Institute Graduate School Seminar Series, at UIGS Colloquium: “The Archaeology of the Eurasian Steppe, January 21, 1998

This paper begins as a critical review of the archaeology of the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age Eurasian steppe, primarily in seeking the distinctions of its postulated horse-riding nomadic inhabitants known variously as Cimmerians, Scythians, Sauromatians, Sarmatians, Saka, Alans, etc., within a dialogue of what defines archaeological evidence as opposed to historical evidence and the problem of conflating one with the other. Eschewing historical labels, archaeological evidence alone for LBA/EIA Eurasian steppe cultures has been primarily based on recognizing artefacts and ecofacts as assumed remnants of a pastoral nomadic adaptation to the steppe environment; however, such a presupposition requires reflection on how a nomadic lifeway may be ascertained with any degree of confidence from a particular residue of material culture and ecofacts. In addressing this question, the paper veers into a discussion of pastoral nomadism itself, whether it exists independent of other modes of subsistence, and if it can be specifically identified among the cultural and environmental residue constituting a particular archaeological site. From this question, the argument proceeds to a critical understanding of archaeology itself, its goals, its areas of expertise, its theoretical principles, its methods of discovery and evaluation, its relationship to anthropology and history, its strengths and limitations, and how archaeology may be identified as a distinct academic discipline.

The given article is devoted to characteristic features of material factors that can be used in justifying a nomadic life-style of the population that manufactured relevant goods, weapons, tools and that organized its economic and cultural production in accordance with natural and ecological possibilities of its habitat. Nomadic traits are most easily established on the basis of the following factors: a means of using draught animals (teaming bulls and bullocks in a wagon-transportable house); a wide use of nomadic herding economy products in the production (sheep wool, bones of relevant animals are main types of raw materials); a character of small ceramic forms that practically do not change their technological and typological characteristics; a degree of spread and a specific weight of leather and felt products in relevant cultures, they are reflected in real samples and in tools (special knifes for cutting leather and felt, and, on a greater scope, versatile tools for cutting animal carcasses); organization of nomadic houses heating in the conditions of constant fuel shortages (a use of censers on legs and their varieties). A great degree of technical culture compactness and a transfer of techniques, shapes and ornamentation characteristics of goods from one sphere of production to another are typical for the whole technology of nomadic cultures of the region. A particular attitude to the recovery and spread of metallic (metallurgic) raw materials was a specific feature of the nomadic environment of the given region, this fact making a specific imprint on the improvement of technology for digging, underground, mining work conducted by these tribes. Due to a well developed herding economy, nomads not only occupied sparsely populated ecological niches in the steppe where the agricultural population could develop only sectors of river valleys and river basins full of water, but also became a transparent medium for a spread of experience and skills in metallurgy, strengthening cultural, economic and spiritual, ritual links between synchronous groups that settled in large territories. The article has been stipulated by a necessity to emphasize the factors of cultural, production and spiritual closeness that was developed due to a unification of the nomadic life-style. Other aspects of the processes linked with an extensive settlement in the steppes during the Bronze Age, namely, ethnocultural characteristics of various groups, a possibility of the ethnic population formation, new principles of the territorial and ethno-social (including family) division of the population were just mentioned. It is understandable as differentiating processes could be connected to a greater extent with changes in the political situation and historical events taking place both in the steppes and the environment (forests, deserts, mountains), while integrating processes, a leveling of demographic environment are more closely related to ecological constants of the region, against the background of which the isolation of sharp demarcation lines stable in space and time that existed between close groups of population of the single ecological niche can outline the territories controlled by the population that belongs to different linguistic macro-families. In the region under consideration, factors for such observations have not been fully systematized, and it is this direction of investigation that can provide a justification in the form of facts for the resolution of the Indo-European issue. Research approaches that have been available for a long period of time are not sufficient for a definite narrowing of the study to establish a common homeland of the Indo-Europeans, the stages and specific directions and succession of their settlement. There is only one thing that is clear: the culture of the North Indo-Aryans is a local, later manifestation of a relevant ethnolinguistical stratum, deformed by innovations introduced to all spheres of life of the given population due to the appearance of war chariots drawn by horses that resulted in a new strategy of aggressive wars that support and strengthen the processes of extended (migrational) settlements.