The "Kurgan Culture," Indo-European Origins, and the Domestication of the Horse: A Reconsideration [and Comments and Replies]

Abstract

Migration in Archeology: The Baby and the BathwaterMigration has been largely ignored by archeologistsfor the last two decades. Yet prehistoric de-mography and population studies are accepted as central concern, and neither of these can be studied projtabb without an understanding of migration. Recent books by Rouse and Renfrew have resurrected migration as a subject of serious analysis. It is proposed here thal systems-oriented archeologists, in rejecting migration, have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. Traditional archeological approaches to migration fall short because a methodology for examining prehistoric migration must be dependent upon an understanding of the general structure of migration as a patterned human behavior. Aspects of such a structure are suggested and an application to a particular caw in Eastern Europe is described.IGRATION IS A STRUCTURED AND WELL-STUDIED aspect of human behavior. Ar-M cheologists, however, generally treat migration as chaotic and poorly understood.The historical and philosophical basis for this insistent mystification is a subject perhaps best treated by critical theorists (Leone, Potter, and Shackel 1987), but a new look at migration is clearly needed. In a review of archeological explanations for the Classic Maya collapse, Renfrew ( 1982: 16) explicitly grouped theories of migrationhnvasion with theories of epidemic disease, and placed both of these in the category of externally determined everlts that are inherently not explicable through general principles. It is suggested here that migration can and should be approached through the application of general principles.Most archeologists would agree that although migrations might well affect cultural evolution, their apparent unpredictability and the difficulty of identifying them archeologically combine to make migration an explanatory construct of limited utility. In other words, misration has been avoided because archeologists lack the theory and methods that might allow them to incorporate migration into the explanation of culture change, not because migration is regarded as unimportant. Instead of developing the needed tools, archeologists have avoided the subject. Many of the needed tools already exist in the form af models developed by geographers, biological anthropologists, applied anthropologi$ts, and sociologists. It is only recently, and apparently only in the field of paleobiology, that such sophisticated models of migration have been applied to the archeological record (Konigsberg 1988).This article advocates a new but by no means original approach to migration. The historic linkage between migration and normative culture history is not logically necessary, and can easily be broken. Recent formulations ofmigration as a structured behavior should permit archeologists to consider the role of migration in culture change from fresh perspectives. From a constructivist perspective, viewing the actions of individuals within specific historical contexts, migration can be understood as a behavior that is typi...

A genetic chronology for the Indian Subcontinent points to heavily sex-biased dispersals

“…Andronovo groups, and potentially Sintashta groups before them, are thought to have infiltrated and dominated the soma -using Bactrian Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) in Turkmenistan/northern Afghanistan by 3.5 ka and possibly as early as 4 ka. The BMAC came into contact with the Indus Valley civilisation in Baluchistan from ~4 ka onwards, around the beginning of the Indus Valley decline, with pastoralist dominated groups dispersing further into South Asia by ~3.5 ka, as well as westwards across northern Iran into Syria (which came under the sway of the Indo-Iranian-speaking Mitanni) and Anatolia [12, 95, 97, 98]. …”

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“…There are archeological evidences that horses' domestication and the Kurgan Culture spread (Indo-European origins) had shared the same place of birth in the west Eurasia. 26,27 In addition to the archeological findings, strong support was provided in a genomic DNA study with 322 non-breed horses, sampled in 12 different locations, in order to represent the wide variety of demographic scenarios. Authors proposed a domestication origin in the west central Eurasian (modern territories of Ukrane and Kazakhastan), which is geographically different from the origin of wild progenitor of domestic horses (E. ferus), positioned in the east Eurasia.…”

Modeling Late Copper Age demographics on the Great Hungarian Plain using ceramic petrography

“…Indeed, kurgan burial tumuli stretch from the steppe near the Dnieper River west into the Hungarian Plain, and even further into central and western Europe (Anthony, 1986). However, it remains unclear how the tumuli developed across the landscape of the Plain.…”