Excerpt from 'The Rise of Bronze Age Society', Kristian Kristiansen, 2005:
5.2 Horse Breeders and charioteers: from the Carpathians to Sintashta, Mycenae and Hattusha
In Homer’s epic Odyssey, the Kingly Hero Menelaus describes Argos as the place ‘where the horses graze’ (Odyssey,Book 4, 95-100) and Nestor is often referred to as ‘the tamer of horses’ or ‘the Gerenian charioteer’. The breeding of horses was a major elite activity at the palaces to ensure well-trained horses and charioteers for the war-chariots. Archaeology is now in a position to reconstruct the historical background to the role held by chariotry and war-horses in the Iliad and the Odyssey. But where did horses and chariots and the accompanying technological and horse training skills originate in the first place? Was this part of an east Mediterranean/Near Eastern military koine, or did part of this new military package of the early second millennium originate in the steppe region? These questions are part of an old discussion of relations between eastern/northeastern Europe and the Aegean/the Near East. To begin with we shall give an archaeological outline in brief of the problem.
The Bronze Age environments of the steppe region
Our understanding of the relationship between early Mycenaean culture and east central Europe and the steppe region has changed drastically in recent years. this is mainly due to new discoveries and research in three areas. East of the Volga, in the steppe zone of the Trans-Urals, Russian archaeologists have unearthed an impressive Bronze Age culture. Within an area some 400 km north to south and 200 km east to west twenty fortified centres have been documented, mainly by air photography, surrounded by hundreds of unfortified settlements (Zdanovich and Batanina 2002). Extensive excavations by Gening, Zdanovich and their colleagues have taken place at the sites of Arkaim and Sintashta. Burial mounds and cemeteries surround the central settlements, some with rich chariot burials. With the publication of the excavations at Sintashta in the Trans-Urals and its settlement system, we now have evidence of a highly developed warrior society - a complex chiefdom or an archaic state (Gening, Zdanovich and Gening 1992; Zdanovich 2002; Zdanovich and Zdanovich 2002). It was no less developed that its Mycenaean counterparts, with people living in heavily fortified settlements and burying their dead in shaft graves under elaborate tumuli with grave constructions like tholos tombs. (5)
The second area of new research concerns the ecological and economic transformations taking place in the steppe and forest steppe regions. Here new palaeobotanical research and C14 dating of buried soils under barrows have revealed the early formation of grasslands and steppe environments, and their systematic exploitation (Anthony 1998; Shislina 2001 and 2003; Kremenetski 2003). During the third millennium BC the Yamna tribal groups (2700-2350 BC) practised small-scale pastoral herding, moving locally between summer and winter grazing, using four-wheeled vehicles. Rich grasslands and higher humidity than today secured this economic transformation and its widespread geographical adaptation, even into the Balkans and the carpathians and Hungary, but also to the east (Ecsedy 1994; Kuzmina 1994). This was a pinoneering phase of expansion. Wooded areas were still preserved in the river valleys, evidenced in burials and wagons (Shislina 2001: 357ff.). The Catacomb Culture groups (2500-1900 BC) saw the further development of a pastoral economy based on sedentary settlements and long-distance herding and trade. It corresponds to the formation of a more hierarchical society, including metal production with a wide distribution (Gak 2000). Periodical ecological stress caused by overgrazing is evidenced, and some soil destruction. Seasonal migrations and herding now extended across the whole ecological zone (Shislina 2001: 259ff.). Although one can hardly generalise from these analyses in the Kalmyk steppe, they suggest a widespread development when we consider the similarity of the archaeological record through the steppe region. (6) It implies that by the beginning of the second millennium BC a pastoral economy was widespread in the central Eurasian zone (Anthony 1998), having acquired its final ecological boundaries (Demkin and Demkina 2002). The osteological evidence confirms that cattle were dominant (more than 50 per cent), especially big horned cattle, followed by horse and sheep. Pigs only played an insignificant role, as they need forests to roam in (Chernykh, Antipina and Lebedeva 1998: Abb. 10-11; Gayduchenko 2002; Morales Muniz and Antipina 2003: Table 22.3).
What we see is a development from localised herding/pastoralism to true pastoralism with sedentary centres of production that unfolded and reached a climax after 2000 BC, for example in the Sintashta/Andronovo Culture and the Srubnaya/Timber Grave Culture. They further represented a new level of political organisation, led by a warrior aristocracy. Agriculture played a minor but increasing role through time as supplementary production, probably a response to increasing aridisation from 2000 BC onwards (Matveev et al. 2002). For recent discussions on the complex issue of economic organization in the steppe during the early to mid-second millenium BC, see Bunyatyan 2003; Gershkovich 2003; Morales Muniz and Antipina 2003; Otrochschenko 2003; Pashkevich 2003.
The third area of new research is in the field of metallurgy and absolute chronology. Here E.N. Chernykh and his colleagues have carried out a long-term research project, which has made it possible to characterise different metallurgical provinces during the third and second millennia BC (Chernykh and Kuzminykh 1989; Chernykh 1992; Chernykh, Avilova and Orlovskaya 2000). In recent years work has been carried out in collaboration with Spanish colleagues to detail this evidence, especially the ecological impact of large-scale mining in the region (Chernykh, Antipina, Moskau and Lebedeva 1998; Vincent Garcia et al. 1999, 2000, n.d.). The mining area of Kargaly in the Urals produced a huge amount of copper during the Bronze Age (an estimated 150,000 tons), which was distributed to the whole steppe region. Deforestation was an immediate result, but must have been overcome by timber imports from further away, just as huge smelting and production sites in the mountains are packed with cattle bones from meat consumption. It suggests a widespread production and exchange of food and metal, that is a widespread division of labour between steppe societies and mining societies. Recent palaeobotanical research has demonstrated that the area was already completely deforested during the Bronze Age (Diaz-del-Rio et al. 2003). It is thus reasonable to assume that much of the copper was distributed in raw form and later remelted at centres like Sintashta.
At the beginning of the second millenium BC, from around 1800 BC, the Circum-Pontic metallurgical system expanded geographically to include the whole of Eurasia (Chernykh 1992: ch. 7; Chernykh, Avolova and Orlovskay 2002). It was based on the production and distribution from highly stratified centres such as Sintashta, with a ruling warrior elite using two-wheeled chariots and living inside heavily fortified settlements, from where they controlled the region. But it also included a widespread adoption of metallurgical know-how, and the opening of new mines. The Pontic/central Eurasian zone was thus at the beginning of the second millennium in a position to interact with the southern regions in Anatolia, Greece and the Iranian plateau on an equal basis. And there is much to suggest that these highly stratified societies had a surplus not only of metal and horses, but also of warriors.
‘The Country of Towns’: the formation of complex societies in the Trans-Urals and the steppe
We shall now describe the basic social, economic and religious component of the Sintashta Culture, based on the excellent monograph presentation in Gening, Zdanovich and Gening (1992), a useful summary in Zdanovich (2002) and articles in Jones-Bley and Zdanovich (2002). Economically the Sintashta/Arkaim Culture was based upon an integration of farming and animal husbandry. This allowed a complex sedentary society to develop, but situated in the Trans-Urals it was vulnerable to changing ecological conditions, as we shall see. The highly organised, proto-urban settlements demanded the production of an agrarian surplus, while large herds of cattle and sheep were grazing in the grasslands, organised from the many smaller outlying settlements, some of them probably seasonal. In the fortified settlements metalwork was a major concern, as was the production of chariots, and training of horses, warriors and charioteers by the ruling elites. the metallurgical activities demonstrate the importance of mining and metalwork, being under the control of the fortified settlements. From here the latter were able to establish far-reaching lines of trade and exchange towards the south-west, soon followed by conquest migrations.
Conditions of preservation were exceptionally good, so wooden logs from burials and human and animal skeletons have been well preserved. This offers a unique insight into burial rituals and animal sacrifice. the latter was a dominant part of burial ritual, horses being sacrificed and buried. Many burials were plundered in antiquity, but they reveal important aspects of religion and cosmology, just as the demonstrate an elaborate system of rituals. burial rituals and the construction of burial chambers and barrows reveal a hierarchical system, corresponding to a similar social hierarchy. Warrior chiefs were buried with chariots and horses in full horse gear (bits), ready for action in the otherworld. Sometimes only the skulls and hoofs were put down. Horse sacrifice was thus an important ritual activity, and linked to the chiefly or royal strata, something we come back to in a later chapter.
[…]
Material culture shows a mix of regional traditions in pottery and larger interregional traits. These are mainly linked to weapons - lances, tanged knives, earrings, and not least horse gear. In this respect Sintashta was part of a shared warrior culture that stretched into the Carpathians, Anatolia and the Aegean. The tanged knives are thus also found in the shaft graves (B-circle), as are the lances (Penner 1998: Tafel 60). To the south-east this warrior/chariot complex stretched into the Caucasus, the Iranian plateau and beyond, where it is documented on pottery and in rock art. It can also be documented by the distribution and expansion of the phallic and column-shaped stone sceptres from the early to mid-second millennium BC (Boroffka and Sava 1998: Abb. 32-39).
[…]
The ‘Country of Towns’ culture has been described as ‘a kind of quintessence of the Eurasian steppe world in the early Metal Ages. the ‘Country of Towns’ is not a special archaeological culture. It is a new stage in the development of the Eurasian steppe - a stage connected with the formation of hierarchical societies and proto-state structures (Zdanovich and Zdanovich 2002: 253).
From c.1800 BC this new military structure began to expand beyond its borders towards the south-west and east, apparently owing to changing ecological conditions that gradually undermined the economy. We must envisage this expansion as one of conquest migrations in combination with the gradual movement of groups of warriors and their attached specialists and families. this historical process may account for the formation of new intensive long-distance connections between the Trans-Urals, the western steppe and the Danube and the Aegean, to be discussed next. It led to the expansion of the horse/chariot military package.
Mycenae and its northern connections
We shall now readdress the old question of the connections between Mycenae and northeastern Europe from the Carpathians to the Urals. We are mainly basing our interpretations on the world of Sylvia Penner (Penner 1998), David (1997, 2001 and 2002) and Boroffka et al. (2002). We have demonstrated that complex chiefdoms in command of a new military technology, specialists and well-trained horses were extending their social, military and commercial networks towards southeastern Europe, the Aegean and Anatolia during the eighteenth century BC, possibly even earlier. Similar expansions apparently took place to the south-east, into the Near East, northern Iran and later India, which we will not discuss (mallory 1998; Kuzmina 2001 and 2002). This archaeological picture of expanding networks between the steppe, the near East and the east Mediterranean is confirmed by textual evidence.
Whether or not one wishes to agree with Robert Drews about the coming of the Greeks (Drews 1988), he nonetheless points to a series of interrelated historical changes in the Near East during the eighteenth to sixteenth centuries BC. they were linked among other things to the spread and adoption of the Indo-European ‘chariot package’, which demanded both skilled specialists and the importation and training of horses from the steppe. this coincided with disruptions and social changes, including conquest migrations over large areas: the Kassits in Mesopotamia, the Aryans in India, the Hysos in Egypt and a new chiefly dynasty in Mycenae (the B-circle), just as Indo-European-speaking people were emerging in Mitanni texts and other sources from the Levant and Palestine. In all cases we are dealing with rather small groups linked to the ruling elite, being warriors and specialists, sometimes rulers. ‘The new rulers are in most cases a dominant minority, constituting only a tiny fragment of the population. This was especially true of the Aryan rulers in Mitanni and the Aryan and Hurrian princes in the Levant; it seems also true of the Kassites in Babylon and the Hyksos in Egypt. The Aryan speakers who ttok over Northwest India may have gone there en masse but were nontheless a minority in their newly acquired domain (Drews 1988: 63).
One can hardly overlook the interrelatedness of these major historical events, which also had far-reaching implications in central and northern Europe. In the Near East this period is considered by some scholars to be a ‘Dark Age’ (van de Mieroop 2004): 114ff.), just as in India (Fran-Vogt 2001) and Central Asia (Francfort 2001). Here calibrated C14 dates are pushing this transformation back into the period 1700-1500 BC or earlier. we thus find ourselves in general agreement with the historical scenario presented by Drews. In the following we shall present the archaeological evidence for the interrelations between the steppe societies, central Europe and the Aegean during the eighteenth to seventeenth centuries BC, and discuss their historical implications.
The recent works of penner, David, Boroffka and others allow the reconstruction of a series of long-distance exchange networks between the western steppe, the Carpathians, the Aegean and Anatolia. It is characterised by the following components: a specialised package of material culture linked to horses and chariots (especially bits and handles for whips), often in bone or antler; a specialised style fo decoration linked to these objects, which was mostly foreign to the local style traditions. This package is accompanied by new weapon types, especially lances, whose distribution extends into the east Mediterranean, and also by new burial rituals with shaft graves, sometimes covered by elaborate kurgans. The similarities between the burial ritual in Sintashta and the early Mycenaean culture cannot be overlooked. Another characteristic feature is the occurrence of identical pieces between these distant regions. It suggests far-reaching and direct personal connections.
How are we to understand these new networks linking the central Eurasian steppe with east central Europe, the Aegean and Anatolia? From a general historical perspective it represents the formation of the so-called steppe corridor linking the Altai with the Carpathians, and ultimately China with Europe. During the Iron Age and the early historical period it produced several major migrations, such as that of the Cimmerians/Scythians, the Sarmatians, the Huns, etc. Thus, the steppe corridor as an interaction zone between eastern and western Eurasia can now be demonstrated to originate 1000 years earlier, as can the social and political complexity accompanying it (Koryakova 2002). From a specific historical perspective, Sylvia Penner has recently proposed that the archaeological distributions of the early second millennium BC represent a conquest migration in the Aegean, leading to the formation of the shaft grave dynasty. This interpretation is not far from that of Robert Drews. Some evidence would seem to support Penner’s argument, including the osteological determination of the skeletons in the B-circle (Angel 1972), where the male population is characterised as Nordic Caucasian (robust and tall), in some opposition to the female population, which is more Mediterranean. The recently discovered shaft grave of a chiefly male warrior from Aegina from the LMH period belongs in the same groups as the male chieftans of the B-circle, and he had injuries and muscle insertions on the right arm from sword fighting (Manolis and Neroutsos 1997). This evidence may show the intrusion of a new ruling segment fo warriors and charioteers. they employed the specific wavy band decoration from antler, bone and ivory of the chariot complex on several of the grave stelae with horse and chariot motifs in the A- and B- circles at Mycenae (younger 1997). Other evidence, however, points to some continuity between MH [Middle Helladic period] and LH [Late Helladic period], although not in the settlement system (Maran 1995).
What can be inferred with some certainty is the importation of a new horse and chariot package, including steppe horses. This was recently verified by an analysis of the two horse burials of paired horses from Dendra from the late MH period, which showed they were of the larger steppe type (Payne 1990). they were well bred and out of an established breeding tradition. Thus, trade in horses, accompanied by new specialists in chariotry and horse dressage, would seem to be a necessary implication of the evidence. In addition our previous analyses of relations between the east Mediterranean and the Carpathians underpins this picture of well-organised long-distance trade connections and travels of chiefly retinues and specialists.
Concluding hypotheses: As the textual evidence of the Near East and Egypt describes conquest migrations and the influx of specialists, warriors and rulers of Aryan origin, it may seem justified to reassess some earlier interpretations of the shaft grave kings. So far the evidence is not conclusive (or our analyses are not conclusive); we therefore propose a minimal and a maximal hypothesis to inspire further research and discussion.
Hypothesis 1: Evidence: The material culture of chariotry belonged to the ruling elites, from the early Hittite kingdom in Anatolia to the chiefdoms in the Carpathians and the Aegean. it suggests elite interaction between these regions, including warriors and specialists in chariotry and horse dressage. Proposition: we thus propose that the distribution of horse gear during the shaft grave period was a result of trade in horse and craftsmanship linked to their training and breeding. it represents a systematic and institutionalised transmission of chariotry from the steppe region, originating in the highly developed fortified settlements such as Sintashta, which formed an archaic state or cheiedom during the earlier second millennium BC in the Urals. From here they controlled mining operations in the Urals, and the north-south trade to the Black Sea and further on to the shaft grave kings.
Hypothesis 2: Evidence: The material culture of chariotry in the Aegean was accompanied by new burial rituals exemplified by the shaft graves in the B- and A-circles, later followed by tholos tombs, all of which resemble the burial forms in Sintashta and the steppe region. In addition the physical anthropology of the male chiefs in the B-circle showed so-called Caucasian-Nordic traits, in opposition to the women buried there. Settlement evidence further shows a break or reorganisation on the mainland during this period (Maran 1995). Also, new foreign weapon types such as lances with split socket are spread along the same lines of communication, but extend further into the east Mediterranean. Proposition: this additional evidence suggests that we are dealing with a conquest migration in the Aegean penetrating further into the east Mediterranean to Crete (the end of the Old Palace period). from here they joined forces with the Hyksos in Egypt, as originally suggested by Mylonas (1972). We consider hypothesis 1 to be verified, whereas hypothesis 2 is possible but need more in-depth studies. Whatever interpretation one chooses, the effects of these historical processes became far reaching to both the east and the west.
p.170-185
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