South Russia, the Caucasus, and the Near East: an Alternative Model for Cultural Change

Abstract

There are many instances in Near Eastern archaeology in which nomadic pastoralists from southern Russia have been cited as the agents of drastic culture change, of the destruction of settlements, and of the degeneration of cultures and civilizations. Examples are the Indo-Europeans in the guise of the Kurgan people, the Andronovo culture, or the Scythians. The purpose of the paper was to suggest that the traditional model of population migration from South Russia through the Caucasus to the settlements of the Near East should not be regarded as the only model of cultural change in this area. Its purpose was also to suggest that the faith of Near Eastern archaeologists in their colleagues' suggestion that nomadic pastoralists existed on the South Russian steppes from the third millennium onward, may be unfounded. Evidence for the existence of nomadic pastoralists on the South Russian steppes is based almost wholly on the negative evidence of a lack of settlements on the steppes themselves at a time when burial mounds there are abundant. It is argued that owing to the temporary nature of nomadic settlements, one would not expect any positive evidence. This, however, is a circular argument and one which is untestable and unresolvable. There are settlements dating to the third millennium B.C. and later in South Russia, but these are confined to the river valleys, and the evidence indicates that they were built by a sedentary population and based on a mixed agricultural-stockbreeding economy. However, it is frequently assumed that the settlements in the valleys do not represent the same population as that buried on the steppes in Pit-Graves, Catacomb-Graves, and Timber-Graves. Again this may be a false assumption. That is, it is equally possible that the steppe grassland itself was not used for anything more than small-scale grazing and burial sites until the midfirst millennium B.C. Cultural changes in southern Russia from the third millennium B.C. onward are indicated by changing burial types, pottery, and metal artifacts. Broad cultural affinities and units, such as the PitGrave culture, have been recognized by the wide distribution of a common burial type, pottery form and decoration, and the forms of metal artifacts. M st frequently these similarities across South Russia have been interpreted as representing the spread not only of a culture but of a population from east to west in successive waves, from the Volga to the Dniester rivers.