to Qizilbash on history

[sirknight67]

Mr. Qizilbash,

if I may:
Gutti(A Hurrian sub-group speaking Caucasian languages?) --> correct

Lulubi(A Hurrian sub-group speaking Caucasian languages?)--> correct

Manaani(A Hurrian sub-group?)--> correct

Hurrians(A Caucasian language?)--> correct

Urartu(A Caucasian language?)--> correct

Tapurs(A Caucasian language? where the name Tabarestaan is derived
possibly?)--> correct

Mittani(A Iranian speaking group) incorrect on this one. That's also
what I used to think but the MIttani are now thought to be part of the
Indic group, or at least a group that comprised the Indic and Dardic
group (some support the latter over the former. At the time of the
Shah, quite a few people theorized that the Mittani were the earliest
Iranians to enter western Asia and because of this, credibility was
given to the belief that the Aryans entered Iran through the Caucasus.
Because of the recent linguistic evidence however, we now know that
this was a "freak" accident and that the earliest Iranian Aryan
penetration into the Iranian Plateau took place from the east, via
Margianna and Gorgan. There were two instances of Iranians entering
western Asia from the Caucasus however these took place at a much
later date and included the Cimmerians who eventually settled in
eastern and Pontine Turkey and the Saka Seni who creatd the gold horde
of Sakiz, and eventually settled in Nakhshevan and were later subdued
by the Achamenids.

[sirknight67]

Doorood Qizilbash

very interesting. In fact, I think the history of the MIttani is very
underated and should be discussed at greater length, since they were
among the first Aryans to enter history and have such impact on their
neighbors at this early date. I believe also that their use of chariot
warfare also had a deep impact on the Hittites, Assyrians and
Egyptians.
Also, if I recall correctly, one authority on this issue (or at least
a well informed individual) would be Mr. Ranjit Mathews, who
frequently posts both here and on the iNdian newsgroups. He posted
some intresting articles on the history and language of the early
Aryans, including the Mittani

regards

qizi...@yahoo.com (qizilbash) wrote in message news:<d2d16dac.03112...@posting.google.com>...
> Thank you Sirknight. Do you know with what sources I can confirm this
> information about these groups we mentioned and their language
> sub-groups? Books or scholarly articles you would know of about
> Hurrians and their sub-groups we mentioned(Gutti, Lulubi, Tapuri,
> Urartu, Amards..)? A friend of mine was asking actually for this
> information and I got interested in it. About Mittani though I
> believe there was an extensive article published here by Arash which
> you can find doing a google search. Also here is part of the
> Encyclopedia Britannica which my friend sent me to back up his claim.
> -----------------
>
> Indo-Iranian empire centred in northern Mesopotamia that flourished
> from about 1500 to about 1360 BC. At its height the empire extended
> from Kirkuk (ancient Arrapkha) and the Zagros Mountains in the east
> through Assyria to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. Its heartland
> was the Khabur River region, where Wassukkani, its capital, was
> probably located.
>
> Mitanni was one of several kingdoms and small states (another being
> Hurri) founded by the Indo-Iranians in Mesopotamia and Syria. Although
> originally these Indo-Iranians were probably members of Aryan tribes
> that later settled in India, they apparently broke off from the main
> tribes on the way and migrated to Mesopotamia instead. There they
> settled among the Hurrian peoples and soon became the ruling noble
> class, called maryannu.
>
> The foreign policy of Mitanni during its early years was based largely
> on competition with Egypt for control of Syria, but amicable relations
> were established with the Egyptian king Thutmose IV (reigned 1425?17
> BC). Perhaps the most outstanding Mitannian king was Saustatar
> (Shaushshatar; reigned c. 1500?c.1450 BC), who is said to have looted
> the Assyrian palace in Ashur. The last independent king of Mitanni was
> Tushratta (died c. 1360 BC), under whose reign Wassukkani was sacked
> by the Hittite king Suppiluliumas I. Tushratta was later assassinated,
> and dynastic struggles ensued until Mattiwaza, a son of Tushratta, was
> aided by Suppiluliumas against Shuttarna of Hurri; thereafter Mitanni
> became part of the Hittite empire and was called Hanigalbat. Shortly
> afterward, however, it was captured by the Assyrian Adad-nirari I
> (reigned c. 1307?c. 1275 BC) and again by Shalmaneser I (reigned c.
> 1275?c. 1245 BC), who turned the territory east of the Euphrates River
> into an Assyrian province. See also Hurrian.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> sirkn...@prodigy.net (sirknight67) wrote in message news:<bea350bd.03112...@posting.google.com>...

[qizilbash]

I totally agree. Arash posted some articles several months back that
had interesting information about the Mittani. In facts the Gods of
the Mittani were mentioned as Indra, Mitra..(which are found in both
avestan and sanskrit).

Here is the article.

Current Anthropology
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/CA/journal/available.html
February 2002; Volume 43 (1); Pages: 63-88

AREAS OF INQUIRY: INDO-EUROPEAN

Archaeology and language: the Indo-Iranians

C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky

Abstract:

This review of recent archaeological work in Central Asia and Eurasia
attempts to trace and date the movements of the
Indo-Iranians--speakers of
languages of the eastern branch of Proto-Indo-European that later
split into
the Iranian and Vedic families. Russian and Central Asian scholars
working
on the contemporary but very different Andronovo and Bactrian Margiana
archaeological complexes of the 2d millennium B.C. have identified
both as
Indo-Iranian, and particular sites so identified are being used for
nationalist purposes. There is, however, no compelling archaeological
evidence that they had a common ancestor or that either is
Indo-Iranian.
Ethnicity and language are not easily linked with an archaeological
signature, and the identity of the Indo-Iranians remains elusive.

Full Text:

Once upon a time--no one really knows how long ago--there was a
community
that spoke a language known today as Proto-Indo-European. For almost
two
centuries scholars have been trying to locate the time and the place
and to
reconstruct that language. Several recent works by archaeologists and
linguists on the origins and eventual spread of
Proto-Indo-European-related
languages--Germanic, Slavic, Romance, Iranian, Indic, Albanian,
Baltic,
Armenian, Tocharian, and Greek --from India to England offer new
perspectives on this centuries-long debate. Among these the work of
Renfrew
(1987), Mallory (1989), Gamkrelidze and Ivanov (1984, 1995), and
Mallory and
Mair (2000) are of greatest interest. The archaeologist Renfrew
contends
that the Proto-Indo-European settlement was located in Anatolia around
7000-6500 B.C. and its subsequent spread can be attributed to a
superior
technology: the invention of agriculture. The linguists Gamkrelidze
and
Ivanov situate the homeland of Proto-Indo-European a few millennia
later in
the nearby Caucasus. Mallory and Mair agree with their
4th-to-5th-millennium
date but place the homeland in the Pontic-Caspian steppes.

Whatever the location of its homeland and the timing of its dispersal,
there
is agreement that the Proto-Indo-European community split into two
major
groups. One group migrated west to Europe and became speakers of
Indo-European (all the languages of modern Europe save for Basque,
Hungarian, and Finnish), while the other headed east to Eurasia to
become
speakers of Indo-Iranian (fig. 1). Indo-Iranian split into Iranian and
Vedic
or Indo-Aryan. The Iranian languages are those of Iran (Iranian),
Pakistan
(Baluch), Afghanistan (Pashto), and Tadjikistan (Tadjik), and the
Indo-Aryan
languages are Hindi and its many related languages. In this review I
am
seeking to trace and date the movement and language of the
Indo-Iranian
community.

The Theorists: Archaeologists, Linguists, and Others

With the renewed interest in the relationship between archaeology,
language,
and archaeogenetics, new solutions are being offered for old problems
(Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza 1994; Kohl and Fawcett 1995;
Meskell
1998; Renfrew and Boyle 2000). The search for the Indo-Europeans in an
archaeological context is almost as old as archaeology. Raphael
Pumpelly's
(1908) highly regarded excavations at Anau, Turkmenistan, were
motivated by
such a search, and they had a profound influence on V. G. Childe
(1928).
Renfrew (1999), reviewing the status of the origins and dispersal of
the
Indo-European languages, suggests that the immediate ancestor of the
Indo-Iranian languages "may perhaps find its material counterpart in
the
Cucuteni-Tripolye culture of the Ukraine" (1999:280). He argues for an
eastward dispersal of Indo-Iranian-speakers after 3000 B.C. He offers
no
"cause" for this dispersal but believes it unrelated to horse riding,
which
he attributes to a later-2d-millennium adaptation. He places the
dispersal
of Indo-Iranian onto the Indian subcontinent around 1700 B.C. and
invokes
his "elite dominance model"--the subordination of the local
populations by
an elite group of charioteers, as described in the Rigveda--to
describe it.

Elena Kuzmina (1994), in search of the homeland of the Indo-Europeans,
examines the regions from the Balkans-Carpathians-Danube Basin to the
Urals
and the eastern steppes of Kazakhstan and places the establishment of
the
Proto-Indo-European community broadly between 4500 and 2500 B.C. and
its
subsequent spread in the range of 3200-2200 B.C. She favors an
Indo-European
homeland in the Pontic-Caspian zone and argues for a series of
eastward
migrations to the Urals. As a result of the movement of tribes along
the Don
Basin in the northern Caspian area and from the western steppes and
the
mountainous Crimea to the eastern steppes beyond the Urals, a
productive
subsistence economy based on cattle breeding and wheat and barley
farming
spread. The large-scale migrations of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, she
believes, were motivated by the reduction of local food resources as a
result of deteriorating climatic conditions and by a conscious search
for
new productive lands and modes of subsistence.

Reliance upon migrations as the principal agent of social change has
been
typical of Russian archaeological interpretations, along with a
blurring of
the distinction between ethnic, linguistic, racial, and cultural
entities,
the isolation of racial/ethnic groups by the craniometric methods of
physical anthropology, and the use of linguistic paleontology to
reconstruct
the development of cultural groups. For instance, attempts have been
made to
identify the physical types of the various Andronovo populations,
invariably
by craniometric means (Alekseev 1967, 1986, 1989). These studies are
more
closely related to racial typology than more recent attempts to gauge
degrees of biological affinity between populations residing in
distinctive
geographical settings (Malaspina et al. 1998, Voevoda et al. 1994).
Skeletal
remains from sites of the Bactrian Margiana archaeological complex
have been
compared with those of the Harappan civilization in terms of nonmetric
cranial features and judged "profoundly" different (Hemphill,
Christensen,
and Mustafakulov 1995). These researchers believe that their study
documents
"gene flow from west to east, from western Iran to the oases of
Central
Asia" (p. 863). In their opinion the Bactrian Margiana complex either
originated in or passed through Iran. But the presence or absence of
certain
nonmetric features of the skull cannot be considered "gene flow" and
hardly
supports such a sweeping conclusion. There is absolutely no evidence
that
genes are involved in determining the presence or absence of the
cranial
features studied; there are numerous nongenetic factors that account
for
cranial features and their variation (for example, diet, infant
cradling).
To speak of "gene flow" suggests a degree of understanding of the
genetic
structure of the architecture of the skull that we simply do not
currently
possess.

The Archaeological Evidence

The principal actors on the archaeological stage are the Pit Grave
culture(s) of the Pontic-Caspian steppe at 4000-2800 B.C., its
descendant
the Catacomb Grave culture(s) of 2800-2000 B.C., and its successors
the
Timber Grave (Srubnaja) culture(s) of 2000-1000 B.C. and the related
Andronovo cultures of 2000-900 B.C. (see figs. 2 and 3). No two
writers
agree on the extent to which these entities are related. This is not
surprising, for there is a conspicuous absence of formal descriptions,
ceramic typologies, chronological sequences, and/or distribution
analyses of
the artifact types that are said to characterize them (Zdanovich
1984). Each
of them is divisible into archaeological variants, and each variant
has its
advocate for its Indo-Iranian identity. Archaeologists describe the
various
"tribes" of the Pit Grave or the earlier Mariupol culture as
inhabiting the
region between the Dnieper and the Urals in the 4th millennium. The
development of cattle breeding and the domestication of the horse are
taken
to be major 5th/4th-millennium developments on the Russian/Ukrainian
steppes. These archaeological cultures are typically identified as
Indo-European (Anthony 1991).

The Andronovo culture was first described by Teploukhov (1927) and has
been
the focus of archaeological research on the Ural/Kazakhstan steppe and
in
Siberia (Jettmar 1951). Kuzmina (1994) is among the majority of
scholars who
believe that the Andronovo is Indo-Iranian and forms a single cultural
entity, albeit with regional variations. Increasingly, however, the
concept
of a single homogeneous culture covering 3 million square kilometers
and
enduring for over a millennium has become untenable (Yablonsky 2000).
Archaeologists working on the steppes are involved in giving new
definitions--that is, distinctive chronological and cultural
phases--to the
cultures of the steppes (Kutimov 1999, Levine et al. 1999 and papers
therein). Similarly, the nature of Andronovo interaction, its
periodization,
and its unstructured chronology are all subjects of heated discussion.
Numerous subcultures have been identified: Petrov (also called
Sintashta-Arkhaim-Petrovka), Alakul, Fedorovo, Sargarin, Cherkaskul,
Petrovalka, Abashevo, Novokumak, and others. On the basis of the type
of
pottery and its technology, the absence of the pig, and the presence
of
camels, cattle, horses, psalia (distinctive decorative pieces, often
of bone
or ivory, attached to the reins at the ends of the bit), and chariots,
Kuzmina argues for cultural continuity of the Andronovo from 2000 to
900
B.C. She uses ethnohistoric evidence to support the idea of the
southern
Urals as the homeland of the Indo-Iranians, tracing the
Iranian-speaking
Sakas and Sauromatians of the 1st millennium back to the Andronovo
tribes
and suggesting that Indo-Iranian texts such as the Rigveda and the
Avesta
reflect the world of the Andronovo culture. In the Rigveda there is an
admonition against the use of the wheel in the production of pottery,
and
the fact that Andronovo pottery is handmade is taken as evidence of
its
makers' Indo-Iranian identity.

In an effort to create a science of archaeo-linguistic correlations,
Kuzmina
(1994) devises the following methods for ethnic attribution: (1)
retrospective comparison--comparison of the archaeological culture
with a
descendant culture whose ethnicity is established by written
documents, (2)
correlating the ethnic attribution derived by the retrospective method
with
lexicostatistical data on the level and type of economy, (3)
determination
of migration routes and the plotting of migration indicators through
time
and space, (4) anthropometric analyses, believed to indicate a group's
biological affinity, (5) study of linguistic substrates and toponymic
correlations, and (6) the reconstruction of culture, cosmology, and
worldview from archaeological and linguistic data. Using these
methods, she
assesses the Andronovo culture as Indo-Iranian and, more specifically,
the
Fedorovo culture (a late variant of the Andronovo) as Indo-Aryan. The
ethnic
indicators here are (1) the absence of the pig from the domestic diet,
(2)
the presence of the Bactrian camel, (3) the special significance of
horse
breeding, (4) the special role of chariots, (5) a cult of the horse
associated with burial contexts, (6) vertically oriented tripartite
vessels
manufactured by coiling, (7) unique quadrangular pots, (8) cremation,
and
(9) houses with high, gabled roofs. Diakonoff (1995: 147) concludes
that
with Kuzmina's methodology "the bearers of a certain archaeological
culture
can securely be identified with the bearers of a language of a certain
group
or with their ancestors."

The ethnic and linguistic identity of the Andronovo culture
nevertheless
remains elusive. A great deal is made of the importance of the horse
in the
Andronovo cultural context, but the role of horse riding as a stimulus
to
the development of sheep, goat, and cattle pastoralism and the
relative
dependence upon pastoral transhumance compared with sedentary
agriculture is
much debated. Given the absence of botanical data providing
information
about crops and the relative paucity of settlement archaeology--save
for the
newly discovered "country of towns"--we have virtually no
understanding of
the demographic situation on the steppes. Khazanov (1983:33-35) has
shown
that a shepherd can control up to 2,000 sheep when riding horseback as
compared with fewer than 500 on foot. However, increase in herd size
results
in risks to the fragile environment of the steppes, and given the
severe
winters, the relative unavailability of water, and the failure of
rainfall
in as many as six out of ten years out-migration (diffusion) is
inevitable
(Khazanov 1983).

The Pit Grave Culture

Kuzmina (1994) is not alone in believing that the domestication of the
horse
introduced a new stage in the evolution of civilization. On the
steppes the
horse allowed for the increasing role of cattle breeding, the
intensification of interethnic communication, the development of
plough
traction, and the use of carts and wagons. By the middle of the 3d
millennium these innovations were being used by tribes of the Pit
Grave
culture from the Danube to the Urals. The 4th-millennium Pit Grave
culture
was characterized by large fortified settlements (e.g., Mikhailovka),
four-
and two-wheeled wagons pulled by bulls or horses, intensive cattle
breeding
and farming, extensive use of metal tools, and burials under mounds
(kurgans) containing carts, wagons, and sacrificed horses. The
migrations of
the Pit Grave culture(s) are considered by some scholars to be
responsible
for the emergence of stock breeding and agriculture in distant
Siberia. With
regard to horse riding Anthony (2000) supports an early date--late
4th/early
3d millennium--while Levine (1999)finds conclusive evidence only in
the late
2d millennium. In light of the fact that texts refer to horse riding
in
late-3d-millennium Mesopotamia, where the domesticated horse was an
obvious
import, it would appear that Anthony is closer to the mark.

The warrior attributes that are evident in the Andronovo culture are
frequently assigned to the Pit Grave culture. Axes, spears, bows and
arrows,
a rich variety of dagger types, and chariots all speak of conflict and
confrontation, as do the heavily fortified communities. Sharp
distinctions
of rank are attested in burial sites. Kuzmina (1994) suggests that
social
position was defined more by social, ideological, and ritual
activities than
by property ownership. Russian archaeologists view the steppe cultures
as a
"transitional type." The concept of a "military democracy," derived
from the
work of Lewis Henry Morgan, remains popular and refers to the presence
of a
chief, a council, and a popular assembly. Khazanov (1979), while
regarding
the military democracy as a particular type of transitional society
applicable to the social formations of Central Asian pastoral nomads,
has
also advocated the adoption of the concept of a "chiefdom" as a
transitional
form preceding the state.

Commenting upon the vehicle burials of the Pit and Catacomb Grave
cultures,
Stuart Piggott (1992:22) points out that over the past 40 years more
than
100 kurgans with vehicles have been excavated but fewer than half have
been
published even in the briefest form. By contrast, Gening, Zdanovich,
and
Gening (1992) have published on the settlement and cemetery of
Sintashta in
the southern Urals, where ten-spoked-wheeled chariots, horse
sacrifices, and
human burials have been radiocarbon-dated to the 1st century of the 2d
millennium B.C.

However horses may have been regarded on the steppes, in Mesopotamia
the
king of Mari, ca. 1800 B.C., is admonished not to ride a horse, lest
he
jeopardize his status: "You are the King of the Hanaeans and King of
the
Akkadians. You should not ride a horse. Let my king ride a chariot or
on a
mule and he will thereby honor his head" (Malamat 1989).

The Petrov, Alakul, and Fedorovo Cultures

The earliest of the Andronovo cultures would seem to be the Petrov,
dated to
the first centuries of the 2d millennium. The Petrov is succeeded by
the
Alakul, which, in turn, is followed by the Fedorovo, dated to the
second
half of the 2d millennium. Both the Alakul and the Fedorovo are
frequently
assigned an Indo-Iranian identity. Chernetsov (1973) and Stokolos
(1972),
however, argue for a Ugric substrate among the Andronovo tribes and a
specific Indo-Iranian identity only for the Alakul, with the latter
proposing a local development for the Fedorovo. Kuzmina (1994) accepts
the
cultural subdivisions of the Andronovo culture but often refers to
cultural
contact and migrations in the context of a singular Andronovo entity.
She
refers to Andronovo influence with regard to the introduction of
specific
axes and adzes of Andronovo type in distant Xinjiang. The
relationships of
the Andronovo with the cultures of Xinjiang are documented by Mei and
Shell
(1999).

P'yankova (1993, 1994, 19991 and Kuzmina (1994) are specific in
linking the
Andronovo culture with the 2d-millennium agricultural communities of
Central
Asia, the Bactrian Margiana archaeological complex. Sites of this
complex
and the related mid-2d-millennium Bishkent culture are seen by
P'yankova as
influenced by the Fedorovo tribes. Fedorovo ceramics, funeral rites,
and
metal (alloyed with tin) and skulls of the Andronovo anthropological
type
are said to be present in a number of Central Asian sites. There is
consensus that throughout the 2d millennium migrations of the
Andronovo
tribes resulted in contact with the Central Asian oases, the cultures
of the
Tien Shan Mountains of Xinjiang, and the indigenous tribes of the
Altai,
Tuva, and Pamir Mountains.

The Timber Grave and the Sintashta-Arkhaim-Petrovka Cultures

Although Kuzmina (1994) identifies the 3d-millennium Timber Grave
culture as
Indo-Iranian, it is only in the Andronovo culture and, specifically,
at the
site of Sintashta that she believes one can document a cluster of
specific
Indo-Iranian cultural traits: (1) a mixed economy of pastoralism and
agriculture, (2) handmade ceramics, (3) horse-drawn chariots, (4)
cultic
significance for the horse, fire, and ancestors, and (5) high status
for
charioteers. There are two contending hypotheses for the origins of
the
Sintashta-Arkhaim-Petrovka culture--as an indigenous culture with its
roots
in the earlier Botai culture of northern Kazakhstan (see Kislenko and
Tatarintseva 1999) and as the result of a migration from the west
(from the
Abashevo and/or the Mnogovalikovo culture(s), themselves variants of
the
Timber Grave culture). Kuzmina appears to favor a western origin,
while
Zdanovich and Zdanovich (1995) appear to favor indigenous roots.
Research on
the question of origins is severely hampered by an inadequate
chronological
framework. Despite the paucity of radiocarbon dates (Gorsdorf et al.
1998),
recent research in Kazakhstan has been able to trace an indigenous
series of
archaeological cultures from the Mesolithic to the Atbasar culture of
the
Neolithic, all preceding the diffusion of the Andronovo from the west
(Kislenko and Tatarintseva 1999).

Excavations at Sintashta were initiated in 1972 under the direction of
V. I.
Stepanov and resumed in 1983 under the direction of G. B. Zdanovich
and V.
F. Gening. The settlement, subcircular in form, is 140 m in diameter
and
62,000 [km.sup.2] in area. Its elaborate fortification system consists
of an
outer wall, a moat, and an inner wall with periodic buttresses
believed to
have formed towers. Entrance to the settlement is by way of two gates,
each
offering angled access and a movable bridge placed over a moat.
Several two-
or three-room houses with hearths, constructed of timber, wattle and
daub,
and unbaked brick, were excavated. Evidence for the production of
metal as
well as ceramics was found in some of the houses.

Two hundred meters northwest of the settlement a burial complex
consisting
of 40 graves with 60-65 in-humations was uncovered. The burials were
placed
in pits in which wooden structures were constructed and roofed with
wooden
beams. Single and multiple burials, adults and children, were placed
in
these wooden structures. The burials contained a wealth of material:
vessels, daggers, pins, awls, needles, axes, mortars, pestles, stone
tools,
bone artifacts, etc. Five graves contained psalia and "battle
chariots."
Twenty-five graves had evidence for the sacrifice of horses, cattle,
sheep,
goats, and dogs. The animals or sometimes only parts of them were
placed
either directly in the burial or in associated pits. From one to six
horses
were placed in individual graves. The excavators had little doubt that
the
differences in the wealth placed in particular tombs indicated a
rank-ordering of social strata. Significantly, several of the burials
containing considerable wealth were of females and children. In some
burials
the excavators recorded the presence of "altars" and associated
"ritual
fires."

A circular barrow 32 m in diameter contained three burial clusters.
The
first group had abundant grave offerings placed in individual chambers
containing numerous sacrificed horses. The second group was placed in
a
central structure 18 m in diameter. Within this burial was uncovered a
large
battle chariot with a very rich inventory of material remains and
numerous
sacrificed animals. This entire complex is interpreted as the burial
of an
extremely important person. A third group of burials consisted mostly
of
women and children placed in simple shallow pits at the edge of the
barrow.
These burials also contained rich grave goods and the remains of
sacrificed
animals.

A small barrow was located 400 m northwest of the large burial
complex. It
was 12 m in diameter and contained six adults and three children, all
placed
in a square wooden structure. Burial 7, a male, was particularly rich
in
material remains, as was burial 10, a female. Both burials contained a
rich
inventory of metals--the male daggers and knives, the female bracelets
and
needles. Both burials contained sacrificial animals. The researchers
suggest
that this burial complex contained a number of related persons.

Another barrow was 15-16 m in diameter and contained a single wooden
chamber
with five bodies. A large battle chariot was uncovered, and near each
of the
deceased was a rich material inventory. Four additional graves were
found
outside of the structure. Some Russian archaeologists believe that
human
sacrifice and the defleshing of the dead were components of Andronovo
burial
ritual, and if so, perhaps these are candidates for such a practice.

Another barrow, looted in antiquity, is 85 m in diameter and is
located
almost immediately adjacent to the large burial complex. Around the
barrow
there is evidence for a 12-m-wide moat. Within the barrow there were
numerous "ritual fires" surrounding two wooden structures and a large
wooden
"temple" structure. The principal burial was placed in a vaulted
dromos.
Over the looted burial chambers an impressive "temple" had been
constructed.

In the opinion of Zdanovich and Zdanovich (1995; Zdanovich 1997), the
Sintashta-Arkhaim-Petrovka culture is characterized by heavily
fortified
communities with moats and walls forming circular or subrectangular
settlements. Gennadi Zdanovich (1995, 1997, 1999), who excavated both
Sintashta and Arkhaim, refers to this culture as the "country of
towns."
Nineteen settlements of this type, spaced about 20-30 km apart, are
known in
an area 450 km by 150 km.

The horse-drawn chariot, a rich inventory of weaponry, tin-bronze
alloying,
and disclike bone psalia are all believed to be innovations of the
Sintashta-Arkhaim-Petrovka culture. The Andronovo culture has also
been seen
as responsible for large-scale metallurgy and as the principal agent
in the
exchange of metals throughout Eurasia in the 2d millennium. The recent
discovery of stannite deposits and tin mining at Muschiston,
Tadjikistan,
associated with Andronovo sherds (Aklimov et al. 1998), adds to the
already
considerable evidence for the mining of copper deposits by the
Andronovo
tribes (Cherynkh 1994a, b). Given the existence of an extensive
Andronovo
metallurgical inventory, its association with the mining of both
copper and
tin, the evidence for the production of metal artifacts at numerous
sites,
and the presumed extensive migrations, the Andronovo culture is often
considered responsible for the dissemination of metallurgical
technology.
Some writers have even suggested that the pastoral nomads of the
steppes--the Andronovo and the even earlier Afanasiev cultures--were
the
agents of the dissemination of metallurgical technology into China
(Peng
1998, Bunker 1998, Mei and Shell 1998).

The search for new metal resources, the alloying of copper with tin,
intensive cattle breeding, the construction of fortified settlements,
and
the development of the horse-driven chariot are all important
innovations of
the "country of towns." Less attention has been paid to plant remains.
At
Arkhaim archaeologists recovered millet (Panicum miliaceum) and
Turkestan
barley (Hordeum turkestan). The excavator has also argued for the
presence
of "irrigated farming" in "kitchen gardens," parallel beds 3-4 m wide
divided by deep ditches (Zdanovich 1999a; 1999b:380).

Arkhaim is a circular fortified settlement approximately 150 m in
diameter.
It is estimated that between 1,000 and 2,000 people inhabited it. The
settlement is surrounded by two concentric defensive walls constructed
of
adobe and clay placed in a log frame. Within the circle, abutting the
defensive walls, are some 60 semisubterranean dwellings. These houses
contain hearths, cellars, and wells, and some have metallurgical
furnaces. A
drainage gutter with pits for collecting water was uncovered in the
circular
street that surrounded the inner portion of the settlement. In the
center of
the settlement was a rectangular "plaza."

Entrance into the settlement was by way of four elaborately
constructed
angular passages constructed over moats and terminating in a gate.
Clearly,
access for the unfamiliar would have been very difficult. Larger
fortified
settlements with far more impressive stone architecture are known but
remain
unexcavated. Russian archaeologists believe that the
Sintashta-Arkhaim-Petrovka culture consisted of three classes,
military and
religious leaders, nobles, and peasants, and they tend to refer to
this
culture as a chiefdom rather than as a military democracy (Koryakova
1996).

The discovery and preservation of Arkhaim is of special significance,
as it
was scheduled to be flooded in 1989 after the completion of a
reservoir. In
1991 the Council of Ministers of the Russian Federation designated
Arkhaim
and its environs a protected site. In subsequent years a scientific
campus
was built, along with tourist facilities, and in 1999 an impressive
Museum
of Natural History and Man was under construction. Arkhaim has become
a
center for followers of the occult and Russian supernationalists, a
theater
of, and for, the absurd and dangerous. It is argued that it was
constructed
to reproduce a model of the universe; that it was built by King Yima,
as
described in the Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrians (Medvedev
1999); that it was a temple observatory; that it was the birthplace of
Zoroaster, who is buried at Sintashta; that it is the homeland of the
ancient Aryans; and that it is the earliest Slavic state. The
swastika,
which appears on pottery from Arkhaim, is proclaimed a symbol of
Aryanism.
Visitors come to pray, tap energy from outer space, worship fire, be
cured,
dance, meditate, and sing. "We Slavs," writes Zdanovich, the director
of
excavations, "consider ourselves to be new arrivals, but that is
untrue.
Indo-Europeans and Indo-Iranians had been living here [in the southern
Urals] since the Stone Age and had been incorporated into the Kazakhs,
Bashkirs, and Slavs; such is the common thread linking us all" (quoted
in
Shnirelman 1998, 1999).

Shnirelman (1995:1) writes that nationalist concerns in the former
U.S.S.R.
are creating "an explicitly ethnocentric vision of the past, a
glorification
of the great ancestors of the given people, who are treated as if they
had
made the most valuable contribution to the culture of all humanity."
The
wave of nationalism in Russia has given rise to numerous publications
of
highly dubious merit. Thus, a monograph published by the Library of
Ethnography and sanctioned by the Russian Academy of Science, Kto Oni
i
Otkuda (Chesko 1998), claims the Arctic to be the original homeland of
the
Vedas and Russian the language with the closest affinity to Sanskrit.
This
heightened nationalism projects a mythical and majestic Slavic past in
which
the archaeology of Arkhaim plays no small part. Geary, discussing
ethnic
group formation (1999:109, my emphasis), states:

The second model of ethnogenesis drew on Central Asian steppe
peoples for
the charismatic leadership and organization necessary to create a
people
from a diverse following.... these polyethnic confederations were
if
anything more inclusive than the first model [in which ethnic
formation
followed the identity of a leading or royal family], being able to
draw
together groups which maintained much of their traditional
linguistic,
cultural, and even political organization under the generalship of
a
small
body of steppe commanders. The economic bases of these
confederations was
semi-nomadic rather than sedentary. Territory and distance played
little
role in defining their boundaries, although elements of the
confederation
might practice traditional forms of agriculture and social
organization
quite different from those of the steppe leadership.

In a similar vein one might imagine the Andronovo culture as
consisting of
"polyethnic confederations" which had varying archaeological
expressions--Alakul, Petrov, Abashevo, "the country of towns,"
etc.--each
maintaining its "traditional linguistic, cultural, and even political
organization." The identification of the Andronovo culture as a
singularity,
in both a cultural and a linguistic sense, transforms the multiple and
the
complex into the singular and simple. In considering the history of
the
peoples of the steppes, whether it be the confederation of the Huns,
the
Goths, or the Sarmatians, Patrick Geary is at constant pains to point
out
that "polyethnicity was obvious" and that "ethnic labels remained
significant ... but they designated multiple and at times even
contradictory
aspects of social and political identity" (1999:117, 125). As Barth
(1969)
long ago pointed out, ethnic groups are subjective, constructed, and
situational, embedded in political and economic relations. Ethnicity
is a
changing phenomenon that attains its greatest expression in situations
of
conflict, competition, and cultural change (Jones 1997).

The Bactrian Margiana Archaeological Complex

A major contender for Indo-Iranian identity and a relatively new actor
on
the archaeological stage of Central Asia is the Bactrian Margiana
archaeological complex, discovered and named by Victor Sarianidi
(1976:71)
through excavations in Afghanistan in the late 1970s (for references
see
Klochkov 1999). "Bactria" was the name given by the Greeks to northern
Afghanistan, the territory around the Amu Darya River, while Margiana
(Margush) was a Persian province of the Achaemenid empire whose
capital was
Merv, in present-day Turkmenistan. Sarianidi (1998a, b) not only
identified
the Bactrian Margiana complex as Indo-Iranian but isolated what he
believed
to be distinctive Proto-Zoroastrian cultural characteristics in the
archaeological record.

Following five years of surveys and excavation at the important site
of
Delbarjin (Kushan/Buddhist) in Afghanistan, a new publication was
initiated
specifically to report on this work: Drevnii Baktria. In the first
volume
Sarianidi (1976) published his excavations in the Dashly Oasis, with
the
initial identification of the Bactrian Margiana complex. In the
following
year (1977) he published the first extensive synthesis of his work in
Afghanistan. His excavations at Dashly III uncovered a round building
interpreted as a temple. The Dashly III culture was reconstructed
along
Mesopotamian lines; a temple community presided over by a "chief
priest"
eventually gave way to kingship as the communal sector became
privatized.
The large round building, which had a buttressed outer wall, was the
focus
of the community, with radial streets leading to it. This "temple,"
with
dozens of rooms indicating domestic functions, was believed to have
housed
150-200 people. Numerous bronze compartmented seals were recovered but
no
sealings. The seals were attributed the same function as in
Mesopotamia--securing doors and stored and transported goods.

Sarianidi concluded that the Dashly III settlements were
self-sufficient
communities managed as temple estates. He specifically drew a parallel
between them and the Uruk community of Mesopotamia and suggested that
a few
elements found ready parallels in the Rigveda and the Avesta: cattle
breeding, fire temples, circular and rectangular fortresses, animal
burials,
and the presence of camel (Sarianidi 1984).

Excavations at the Dashly Oasis, Togolok 21, Gonur, Kelleli, Sapelli,
and
Djarkutan have provided extraordinarily rich documentation of material
remains and architectural exposures, as well as a chronological
sequence for
the Bactrian Margiana complex (for a review see Askarov and Shirinov
1993).
The very extensive horizontal exposure at each of these sites--a
signature
of Soviet archaeology--is almost as impressive as the monumental
structures
discovered in them, all identified as either temples, forts, or
palaces.
Sarianidi (1990, 1998b) states that Gonur was the "capital" of the
complex
in Margiana throughout the Bronze Age. The palace of North Gonur
measures
150 m by 140 m, the temple at Togolok 140 m by too m, the fort at
Kelleli 3
125 m by 125 m, and the house of a local ruler at Adji Kui 25 m by 25
m.
Each of these formidable structures has been extensively excavated.
While
they all have impressive fortification walls, gates, and buttresses,
it is
not always clear why one structure is identified as a temple and
another as
a palace. Nor is there a clear signature or architectural template
within
the complex; in fact, each building is unique, save for the fact that
all
are fortified by impressive walls and gates. The majority of the
objects
recovered are ascribed simply to a major feature (e.g., "the palace at
North
Gonur"). However, when a complex feature such as the so-called
priestess
burial at Togolok 1, where two bulls and a driver may have been
sacrificed,
is excavated, a full contextual analysis is provided.

Sarianidi (1990) advocates a late-2d-millennium chronology for the
Bactrian
Margiana complex, describes it as the result of a migration from
southeastern Iran, and identifies it as Indo-Iranian, with objects,
beliefs,
and rituals ancestral to Zoroastrianism. An impressive series of
specific
parallels in pottery, seals, stone bowls, and metal types is found
with
sites in Baluchistan and with Tepe Yahya, Shahdad, and the Jhukar
culture of
late Harappan times. There is absolutely no doubt, as is amply
documented by
Pierre Amiet (1984), of the existence of Bactrian Margiana material
remains
at Susa, Shahdad, and Tepe Yahya, but there is every reason to doubt
that
these parallels indicate that the complex originated in southeastern
Iran.
The limited materials of this complex are intrusive in each of the
sites on
the Iranian Plateau as they are in sites of the Arabian peninsula
(Potts
1994).

Although ceramics from the Andronovo cultures of the steppe have been
found
at Togolok 1 and 21, Kelleli, Taip, Gonur, and Takhirbai, Sarianidi
(1998b:42; 1990:63) is adamant in opposing any significant Andronovo
influence on the Bactrian Margiana complex: "Pottery of the Andronovo
type
does not exceed 100 fragments in all of southern Turkmenistan." As
rigorous
approaches to data retrieval were not practiced, this figure must be
merely
impressionistic. Kuzmina and Lapin (1984) suggest that drought dried
up of
the delta of the Murghab River, making possible an incursion from the
steppes by Andronovo warrior tribes that put an end to the Bactrian
Margiana
complex. By the middle of the 2d millennium all its sites had been
abandoned, for reasons that remain elusive.

The question of the nature and the extent of interaction between the
Andronovo cultures of the steppe and the sedentary farmers of Bactria
and
Margiana is of fundamental importance. As noted, the two
archaeological
entities are distinctive in their material culture and synchronous,
and both
have been identified as Indo-Iranian. Decades ago, in his excavations
at
Takhirbai 3, V. M. Masson (1959) suggested that during the first half
of the
2d millennium there was a high degree of interaction between the
steppe
nomads and the sedentary farmers of Bactria and Margiana. This has
been
resoundingly confirmed by the highly productive archaeological surveys
undertaken recently by the Turkmen-Russian-Italian surveys in Margiana
(Gubaev, Koshelenko, and Tosi 1998). Erdosy (1998:143) has recently
observed
that "the greatest desideratum is a clearer understanding of spatial
relationships, the one area of archaeological research that has been
seriously neglected by Soviet scholarship."

Archaeological surveys in the Murghab area have documented hundreds of
settlements with Bactrian Margiana complex, post-Bactrian Margiana
complex,
and incised coarse ware (a generic Andronovo ceramic), and therefore
there
is little doubt that the interaction of peoples from the steppes with
their
sedentary Central Asian neighbors was both extensive and intensive, if
not
always peaceful. Sarianidi (1999) acknowledges this interaction and
now
argues that Andronovo-type vessels have been found only in rooms used
for
the preparation of haoma-type drinks in Margiana. He concludes that
the
Bactrian Margiana complex is Indo-Aryan and the Andronovo Iranian but
that
as Proto-Zoroastrians the two have cultic rituals in common.

Clearly, the surveys in the Murghab region indicate that it was what
Mary
Louise Pratt (1992:6-7) calls a contact zone--"the space in which
peoples
geographically and historically separated come into contact with each
other
and establish on-going relations, usually involving conditions of
coercion,
radical inequality, and intractable conflict" and characterized by
"radically asymmetrical relations of power." While the relationship
between
people from the steppes and those of the Bactrian Margiana complex and
its
successors remains undefined, the fact that all fortified their
settlements
is suggestive. The surveys highlight that archaeological cultures, no
less
than modern ones, are not distinct "cultures" or "ethnic groups," what
Geertz (2000:234) calls "lumps of sameness marked out by limits of
consensus," but permeable mosaics of interacting similarities and
differences.

Evidence for the interaction of settled farmers and the Andronovo
culture
also comes from the excavations in southern Tadjikistan at Kangurttut
(Vinogradova 1994), where Andronovo ceramics were recovered.
Vinogradova
suggests that "infiltration of the Andronovo tribes to the south was
relatively slow" and peaceful, allowing a "settling down and
dissolution" of
the steppe population into that of the farming oases (Vinogradova
1994:46).

The extensive metallurgy of both the steppe cultures and the Bactrian
Margiana complex is well documented (Chernykh 1992). The types that
characterize the two are entirely distinctive. From her study of the
Bactrian Margiana metals N. N. Terekhova concludes that techniques of
casting and forging were utilized in the production of objects
manufactured
from copper-arsenides, native copper, and, very rarely, copper-tin
bronze.
In the latter category 26 objects were analyzed and proved to contain
from 1
to 10% tin.

N. R. Meyer-Melikyan (1998) has analyzed floral remains recovered from
the
monumental complex at Togolok 21: "fragments of stems, often with
leaves,
pollen grains, anterophors, microsporangia, and scraps of megasporia
skin
and parts of fruit" (p. 203) found in large pithoi in rooms 23 and 34.
She
concludes that the remains belong to the genus Ephedra. Sarianidi is
thus
afforded the opportunity of following a number of scholars who believe
that
ephedra was the essential ingredient in haoma or soma, the mildly
intoxicating drink referred to in the sacred books of the
Indo-Iranians, the
Rigveda and the Avesta. The presence of ephedra at Gonur is taken by
Sarianidi as further testimony to the Indo-Iranian and
Proto-Zoroastrian
identity of the Bactrian Margiana complex, along with the presence of
fire
temples, fire altars (which he compares to pavi, Zoroastrian altars),
and
particular mortuary rituals (animal sacrifice).

Sarianidi (1998b) now accepts, albeit with misgivings, the higher
chronology
for the Bactrian Margiana complex advanced in the mid-1980s by a
number of
scholars. A series of radiocarbon dates collected by Fredrik Hiebert
(1994)
at Gonur offers unequivocal evidence for the dating of the complex to
the
last century of the 3d millennium and the first quarter of the 2d
millennium. A new series of radiocarbon dates from Tepe Yahya IVB-4,
where
Bactrian Margiana imports were recovered, confirms the
late-3d-millennium
dating for the beginnings of the complex (Lamberg-Karlovsky 2000).
Sarianidi
(1999:78) writes, "The first colonists from the west appeared in
Bactria and
Margiana at the transition from the 3d to the 2d millennium B.C."
However,
his insistence upon dating Gonur to 1500-1200 B.C. flies in the face
of his
own [C.sup.14] dates, which average 300-500 years earlier.

Of equal significance is Sarianidi's new perspective on the origins of
the
Bactrian Margiana complex. At numerous sites Sarianidi identifies
altars,
fire temples, the importance of fire in mortuary rituals, fractional
burials, burials in vessels, and cremation, and in chamber 92 at Gonur
a
dakhma--a communal burial structure associated with Zoroastrian
mortuary
practice, in which the dead are exposed--is reported. Animal burials
including camel and ram were recovered from Gonur and other Bactrian
Margiana sites. At North Gonur the "Tomb of the Lamb" contained a
decorated
metal macehead, silver and bronze pins with elaborately decorated
heads, an
ornamental ivory disc, and numerous "faience" and bone pieces of
inlay.
Sarianidi interprets this as evidence for the transition from human to
animal sacrifice, even though there is no unequivocal evidence for
human
sacrifice either on the steppes or in Central Asia. Mortuary rituals,
architectural parallels (particularly in what Sarianidi calls
"temples"),
and above all, stylistic similarities in cylinder seals all converge
to
suggest to him that Bactria and Margiana were colonized by immigrants
from
the Syro-Anatolian region (1998a:76, 142). He traces this migration in
two
directions: (1) across the Zagros to Elam and Susa, where there are
numerous
Bactrian Margiana parallels (Amiet 1984), from there to Shahdad and
Yahya,
where again such materials are found (Hiebert and Lamberg-Karlovsky
1992),
and finally to Baluchistan and (2) north of Lake Urmia and along the
Elburz
Mountains to Hissar in period InB and finally to the oases of Bactria
and
Margiana. Unfortunately, there is scant evidence to support the notion
of an
extensive migration from Syro-Anatolia to Bactria and Margiana in the
archaeological record.

Architectural similarities are exceedingly generalized, and the
parallels to
time/space systematics are weak. Thus it is suggested that a text from
Qumran referring to animal sacrifice, the "Tomb of the Lamb" at Gonur,
and a
"Ligabue vessel" said to have come from an illegal excavation at
Shahdad
that is vaguely associated with the Aegean "prove the real historical
link
of the tribes that immigrated from the west with the Mycenean-Minoan
world"
to Bactria and Margiana (Sarianidi 1998a: 44). Sarianidi believes that
the
evidence provided by the seals is conclusive--that they derive their
thematic inspiration and style from the Syro-Anatolian region and that
their
motifs and composition are of "undisputed Hittite-Mitannian origin"
(1998a:143). One gets the impression that he has chosen the
Syro-Anatolian
region as the homeland of the Bactrian Margiana complex in order to
situate
it within the geographical region in which the first Indo-Aryan texts
were
recovered and thus strengthen his Indo-Aryan claim for it (Sarianidi
1999).

In a treaty between a Hittite and a Mitanni king from the 15th century
B.C.,
the latter swears an oath by a series of gods who are major Indic
deities:
Mi-it-ra (Indic Mitra), Aru-na (Varuna), In-da-ra (Indra), and
Na-sa-at-tiya. In another text a man named Kikkuli counts from one to
nine
in Indic numerals and is referred to as an assussanni (Sanskrit
asvasani-),
a trainer of horses and specialist in chariotry. In yet another text,
Indo-Aryan words are used to describe the colors of horses. Finally,
the
Mitanni word marya is precisely the same word as the marya referred to
in
the Rigveda with the meaning "warrior". This evidence has led to the
consensus view that an Indo-Aryan-speaking elite of chariot warriors
imposed
themselves on a native Hurrian population to form a ruling dynasty
that
endured for several centuries (Mallory 1989). (Ghirshman [1977]
attempted to
identify the arrival of the Indo-Aryans in the region of the Humans
(northern Syria) by linking them with Habur Ware and black and grey
wares,
but this untenable argument was elegantly refuted by Kramer [1977].)
These
texts indicate that by the 16th/15th centuries B.C. a separate
Indo-Aryan
language had already diverged from a putative Indo-Iranian linguistic
entity. Thus, the split of the Indo-Iranian languages into Iranian and
Indo-Aryan must predate the 14th and 15th centuries B.C., perhaps by
as much
as 500 years, and this is where linguists generally place it.

The vast majority of the Bactrian Margiana seals contain motifs,
styles, and
even material that are entirely foreign to the repertoire of seals
from
Syro-Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the Gulf, and the Indus (Baghestani 1997).
They
are of a thoroughly distinctive type and are to be seen as indigenous
to the
Central Asian Bronze Age world and not as derivative from any other
region.
They have been found in the Indus civilization, on the Iranian
Plateau, at
Susa, and in the Gulf. Amiet (1984) and Potts (1994) have documented
the
wide distribution of Bactrian Margiana-complex materials, and it is in
this
context that the specific parallels to the Syro-Anatolian region are
to be
appreciated. The wide scatter of a limited number of artifacts does
not
privilege any area as a homeland for the complex. The very limited
number of
parallels between the Bactrian Margiana complex and Syro-Anatolia
signifies
the unsurprising fact that, at the end of the 3d and the beginning of
the 2d
millennium, interregional contacts in the Near East brought people
from the
Indus to Mesopotamia and from Egypt to the Aegean into contact.

The idea of a distant homeland and an expansive migration to Central
Asia is
difficult if not impossible to maintain, but the origin of the
Bactrian
Margiana complex remains a fundamental issue. Although some scholars
advance
the notion that it has indigenous roots, the fact remains that its
material
culture is not easily derived from the preceding Namazga IV culture.
Its
wide distribution, from southeastern Iran to Baluchistan and
Afghanistan,
suggests that its beginnings might lie in this direction--an area of
enormous size and an archaeological terra nullius. In fact, the
Bactrian
Margiana complex of Central Asia may turn out to be its northernmost
extension, while its heartland may lie in the vast areas of unexplored
Baluchistan and Afghanistan.

Ahmed Ali Askarov (1977; Askarov and Shirinov 1993) has excavated two
important settlements of this complex in Uzbekistan: Sapelli Depe and
Djarkutan. The recent syntheses of these excavations (Askarov and
Shirinov
1993) offer an abundance of illustrations of the architecture,
ceramics, and
material remains recovered. The walled settlement of Djarkutan covers
an
area of approximately too ha and features a fortress, almost
completely
excavated, of more than 3 ha. The architecture and material inventory
firmly
place Djarkutan and Sapelli Depe within the Bactrian Margiana cultural
context. Askarov, following Sarianidi, places Djarkutan in the second
half
of the 2d millennium B.C. and describes palaces, temples, and fire
altars as
related to a Proto-Zoroastrian world.

Askarov pays special attention to a large structure at Djarkutan, over
50 by
35 m, identified as a "fire temple." This structure contains extensive
storage facilities and a large paved central room with a raised podium
in
its center that is believed to be the seat of the "sacred fire," as
well as
other rooms containing "fire altars." This impressive building is
explicitly
described as Proto-Zoroastrian. At both Djarkutan and Sapelli Depe,
extensive excavation has uncovered dozens of structures and numerous
graves,
but because there is little attribution of materials to specific rooms
and/or structures one can only summon a vague notion as to how many
building
levels there are at a single site. My own visits to Gonur, Togolok,
and
Djarkutan confirm that each of these sites has multiple building
levels, but
the publications present the data as being essentially from a single
time
period. Even though Sarianidi points out that Gonur had 2 m of
accumulation
and Taip 2.5 m, the stratigraphic complexity and/or periodization of
these
sites is left unexplored. Thus, the internal development and
chronology of
the complex still await definition. Askarov reconstructs social
stratification at Djarkutan, from aristocrats to slaves, within a
state-structured society. He identifies both sites as inhabited by
Indo-Iranian tribes which, he believes, played an important role in
the
later formation of Uzbek, Tadjik, and Turkmen nationalities.

The settlement pattern around Djarkutan and Sapelli mirrors that of
the
sites excavated by Sarianidi. A large settlement with impressive
"temples"
and/or "palaces" is surrounded by smaller agricultural villages. After
Sapelli was abandoned for reasons unknown, the site, particularly the
region
about the "temple," was used as a cemetery. A total of 138 graves were
excavated. Raffaele Biscione and L. Bondioli (1988) report that
females
out-numbered males by three to two. While both male and female graves
contained numerous ceramics, metals, and stone vessels, females were
accompanied by an average of 15.5 objects and males by 7.5. Two male
graves,
however, stand out from all the rest in number of objects and in
placing the
dead in wooden coffins.

Striking evidence for interaction between the Bactrian Margiana
complex and
the steppe cultures is reported from the salvage excavation of an
elite tomb
discovered along the upper Zerafshan River in Tadjikistan (Bobomulloev
1999). Excavation of this tomb yielded the burial of a single male,
accompanied by a ram, psalia identical to those recovered from
Sintashta, a
bronze pin terminating with a horse figurine, and numerous ceramics of
Bactrian Margiana type. This striking association in a single tomb
underscores the existence of a paradox. On the steppes there is ample
evidence for the use of horses, wagons, and chariots but an
exceedingly
scant presence of Bactrian Margiana material remains, while in
Bactrian
Margiana communities there is scant evidence for steppe ceramics and a
complete absence of horses and their equipment or their depiction.
Such an
asymmetry in the distribution of these highly distinctive cultures
would
seem to suggest a minimum of contact between the two. The fact that
representative communities of both cultures (e.g., Arkhaim and Gonur)
are
heavily fortified suggests the need of each community to prepare for
conflict. The extent of the conflict that existed within these
distinctive
cultures as well as between them remains unknown.

The almost complete absence of evidence of contact between the
Bactrian
Margiana complex and the cultures of the steppe is made the more
enigmatic
by the evidence of settlement surveys. Gubaev, Koshelenko, and Tosi
(1998)
have found numerous sites of the steppe cultures near Bactrian
Margiana
settlements. The evidence therefore suggests intentional avoidance.
Clearly
this situation, should it be correctly interpreted, requires
theoretical
insights that await elucidation.

Iron Age Settlements in China

In the 2d century B.C., Zhang Qian, a Chinese envoy stationed in the
western
provinces, compared the agrarian and nomadic polities of Xinjiang, and
Nicola DiCosmo (2000) finds those Iron Age settlements similar to the
Bactrian Margiana complex sites with respect to size, fortifications,
oasis
environments, subsistence patterns, and processes of nomadic-sedentary
interaction. Zhang Qian wrote of 24 "walled towns" in Xinjiang that
served
as "capitals," and DiCosmo calls these nomadic settlements
"city-states."
Wutanzli consisted of 41 households containing 231 individuals, of
whom 57
were capable of bearing arms; Yanqi was among the most populous, with
4,000
households containing 32,100 individuals and an army of 6,000. Chinese
sources identify these political entities as guo, traditionally
rendered in
England as "state." Each guo was a political formation with a
recognizable
head, a bureaucratic hierarchy, and a military organization. The
Chinese
texts indicate that the pastoral nomads maintained a larger
military-to-civilian ratio than their agrarian neighbors.

The scale of the pastoral nomadic "empire" in the late Iron Age is
attested
by the Wusun of Xinjiang's Tarim Basin, with a population of 630,000
and an
army of 188,800 (DiCosmo 2000:398). To the Wusun can be added the
pastoral-nomadic Saka, Yuezhi, and Xiongnu and the later Mongol
confederations, each of which affected the political organization of
Eurasia
on a continental scale. Relationships between nomadic and sedentary
communities were typically hostile; the Chinese sources suggest that
insufficient food supplies resulted in competition and conflict over
agricultural resources. When nomadic polities were strong, they
extracted
tribute from their more sedentary neighbors, thus ensuring the need
for an
extensive military presence in return for a sufficient and regular
food
supply (see also Jettmar 1997). It is entirely possible that in the
Bronze
Age the sedentary Bactrian Margiana complex and the pastoral-nomadic
Andronovo cultures formed an "ideal type" (in the Weberian sense) of
sociopolitical foundation that is mirrored in these later Chinese
texts.

Archaeological and Linguistic Correlations

The archaeologist A. L. Netchitailo (1996) refers to all the
archaeological
cultures on the steppes as belonging to what he calls "the European
community." This view can be interpreted as inclusive, in which case
Altaic-
and Ugrian-speakers become European, or exclusive, in which case they
played
no role on the steppes. I argue for a different interpretation
entirely--that the bearers of any of the variants of the Andronovo
culture
and the Bactrian Margiana complex may have spoken Indo-Iranian but may
just
as readily have spoken a Dravidian and/or an Altaic language.
Contemporary
methodologies, linguistic or archaeological, for determining the
spoken
language of a remote archaeological culture are virtually nonexistent.
Simplified notions of the congruence between an archaeological
culture, an
ethnic group, and a linguistic affiliation millennia before the
existence of
texts is mere speculation, often with a political agenda. Archaeology
has a
long way to go before its methodology allows one to establish which
cultural
markers, pottery, architecture, burials, etc., are the most reliable
for
designating ethnic identity.

Some scholars, both linguists and archaeologists, subscribe to the
notion
that the Dravidians migrated from the Iranian highlands to South Asia,
where
they came into contact with the Indus civilization (Witzel n.d.);
others
even suggest that the horse and the camel were introduced into Iran by
the
Dravidians (Allchin 1995:31; Kenoyer 1998:78). The Bactrian Margiana
complex
could have been Indo-Iranian, Dravidian, Altaic, or any combination of
the
three. If, say, it was Dravidian, then which archaeological culture
represents the others? Central Asia has either too many languages and
too
few archaeological cultures or too few languages and too many
archaeological
cultures to permit an easy fit between archaeology and language.

Archaeologists and linguists share a difficulty in confronting and
identifying processes of convergence and divergence. Migrations result
in
linguistic and cultural divergence, giving rise to the family-tree
model of
language formation, while seriation, the establishment of a "genetic"
relationship between two objects in distinctive material cultures,
indicates
cultural divergence in the archaeological record. Convergence--the
coming
together of two distinctive languages and/or cultures--is a more
recent
linguistic concern that is completely ignored in archaeology.
Archaeological
cultures either progress, change because of internal social processes
(rarely demonstrated), or, more typically, are altered by external
factors
(population pressure, climate change, migration/ diffusion, etc.). The
Australian linguist R. M. W. Dixon (1997) has given new life to the
importance of linguistic convergence, first advocated by Trubetskoy
(1968
[1939]). Dixon (1997:3) convincingly argues that migrations, which
trigger
linguistic (and cultural) divergence, are rare, the more normal
situation
being linguistic, and I daresay cultural, convergence:

Over most of human history there has been an equilibrium situation.
In a
given geographical area there would have been a number of political
groups,
of similar size and organisation, with no one group having undue
prestige
over the others. Each would have spoken its own language or
dialect. They
would have constituted a long-term linguistic area, with the
languages
existing in a state of relative equilibrium.

This would seem to describe the archaeological cultures of the steppes
from
the Pit Grave to the Andronovo culture(s). Given the increasingly
large
number of divisions and subdivisions of the generic Andronovo
culture(s),
with evidence for no one group's having "undue prestige over the
others,"
there is no reason to believe that they all shared an Indo-Iranian
language.
From the millennia-deep common roots of the Andronovo culture(s) and
before
that the related Timber Grave culture(s), processes of both
convergence and
divergence (archaeologically indicated by the eastward migrations of
the
Andronovo culture[s]) allow for the presence of not only Indo-Iranian
but
other language families as well.

Clearly, the idea of the convergence of cultures, that is, the
assimilation
of local populations by incoming peoples, is very poorly developed in
archaeology. The problem of identifying convergence in an
archaeological or
linguistic framework is highlighted by Henning's (1978) attempt to
identify
the Guti as the "first Indo-Europeans." At ca. 2200 B.C. the Guti
invaded
Mesopotamia and brought down the powerful Akkadian empire. They are
identified in the texts as mountain people, probably from northwestern
Iran,
who ruled Mesopotamia for approximately 100 years. Archaeologists have
been
unable to identify a single fragment of material culture in
Mesopotamia as
belonging to the Guti, and the Akkadian (western Semitic) texts
contain no
loanwords identifiable as Indo-European. Except for their name and
their
activities as recorded in the Mesopotamian texts, the Guti are all but
invisible. Henning (see also Narain 1987) suggests that after their
conquest
of Mesopotamia they migrated to the east, where Chinese texts refer to
them,
as the Yue-chih (the phonological equivalent of "Guti" in Chinese). In
the
first half of the 2d millennium there is not a shred of archaeological
evidence for a migration from Mesopotamia to China, nor is there a
parallel
in the realm of the Yue-chih for a Mesopotamian-Gutian material
culture.
This does not negate the Guti (Yuechih) identity but merely
underscores the
fact that convergence can virtually obliterate the ability to
distinguish
previously distinctive entities, whether cultural or linguistic.

Conclusions

Russian scholars working in the Eurasiatic steppes are nearly
unanimous in
their belief that the Andronovo culture and its variant expressions
are
Indo-Iranian. Similarly, Russian and Central Asian scholars working on
the
Bactrian Margiana complex share the conviction that it is
Indo-Iranian. The
two cultures are contemporary but very different. Passages from the
Avesta
and the Rigveda are quoted by various researchers to support the
Indo-Iranian identity of both, but these passages are sufficiently
general
as to permit the Plains Indians an Indo-Iranian identity. Ethnicity is
permeable and multidimensional, and the "ethnic indicators" employed
by
Kuzmina can be used to identify the Arab, the Turk, and the Iranian,
three
completely distinctive ethnic and linguistic groups. Ethnicity and
language
are not so easily linked with an archaeological signature.

Furthermore, archaeology offers virtually no evidence for Bactrian
Margiana
influence on the steppe and only scant evidence for an Andronovo
presence in
the Bactrian Margiana area. There is certainly no evidence to support
the
notion that the two had a common ancestor. There is simply no
compelling
archaeological evidence for (or, for that matter, against) the notion
that
either is Indo-Iranian.

Indo-Iranian is a linguistic construct with two branches, one of which
went
to Iran and the other to northern India. The time of their arrival in
these
new homelands is typically taken to be the 2d millennium B.C. Not a
single
artifact of Andronovo type has been identified in Iran or in northern
India,
but there is ample evidence for the presence of Bactrian Margiana
materials
on the Iranian Plateau and in Baluchistan (e.g., at Susa, Shahdad,
Yahya,
Khurab, Sibri, Miff Qalat, Deh Morasi Ghundai, Nousharo [for a review
see
Hiebert and Lamberg-Karlovky 1992]). It is impossible, however, to
trace the
continuity of these materials into the 1st millennium and relate them
to the
known cultures of Iranian-speakers--the Medes or the Achaemenids (or
their
presumed Iron Age ancestors [see Ghirshman 1977, Young 1967]). The
only
intrusive archaeological culture of the 2d millennium that directly
influences Iran and northern India is the Bactrian Margiana
archaeological
complex, but it cannot be linked to the development of later 2d- and
1st-millennium archaeological cultures on the Iranian Plateau.

The identity of the Indo-Iranians remains elusive. When they are
identified
in the archaeological record it is by allegation rather than
demonstration.
It is interesting that the archaeological (and linguistic) literature
has
focused entirely upon the Indo-Iranians, overlooking the other major
linguistic families believed to have been inhabiting the same
regions--the
Altaic, the Ugric, and the Dravidian. Each of these has roots in the
Eurasiatic steppes or Central Asia. The fact that these language
families
are of far less interest to the archaeologist may have a great deal to
do
with the fact that it is primarily speakers of Indo-European in search
of
their own roots who have addressed this problem.

In an interesting "Afterword" to Sarianidi's Margiana and
Protozoroastrianism, J. P. Mallory asks, "How do we reconcile deriving
the
Indo-Iranians from two regions [the steppes and the Central Asian
oases] so
different with respect to environment, subsistence and cultural
behavior?"
(1998a:181). He offers three models, each of interest, none supported
by
archaeological evidence, one of which is that the Bactrian Margiana
complex
was Indo-Iranian and came to dominate the steppe lands, serving as the
inspiration for the emergence of fortified settlements such as
Sintashta in
the southern Urals. Thus, an external source is provided for the
development
of the "country of towns" and with it a linguistic affiliation.
Mallory
admits that this model is unlikely. His conclusion is that the nucleus
of
Indo-Iranian linguistic developments formed in the steppes and,
through some
form of symbiosis in Bactria-Margiana, pushed southward to form the
ancient
languages of Iran and India (p. 184). It is, however, that "form of
symbiosis" that is so utterly elusive!

Linguists too often assign languages to archaeological cultures, while
archaeologists are often too quick to assign their sherds a language.
Denis
Sinor (1999:396), a distinguished linguist and historian of Central
Asia,
takes a position that more might consider: "I find it impossible to
attribute with any degree of certainty any given language to any given
prehistoric civilization." The works I have mentioned in this piece
offer
archaeological data of great interest and importance, and all their
authors
identify the archaeological cultures with which they are working as
Indo-Iranian. Linguists cannot associate an archaeological culture
with
words, syntax, and grammar, and archaeologists cannot make their
sherds
utter words. We need a third arbiter, which may or may not offer some
degree
of resolution to the relationships between archaeological culture and
language. Perhaps that arbiter will be in our genes. To date only a
few
mitochondrial and Y-chromosome studies of Eurasian populations have
been
undertaken (Voevoda et al. 2000). Eliza Khusnutdinova and her team at
the
Uta Research Center are conducting pioneering DNA studies in the
Volga-Urals
region of Russia. In the context of a renewed fashion of relating
archaeology, culture, and language it is well to remember that neither
sherds nor genes are destined to speak specific languages, nor does a
given
language require a specific ceramic type or genetic structure.

Comments

DAVID ANTHONY
Anthropology Department, Hartwick College,
Oneonta, N.Y. 13820, U.S.A.
(anth...@hartwick.edu). 11 IX 01

Central Asian/steppe archaeology needs ambitious, large-scale studies
like
this one, but inevitably such summaries contain inaccuracies, which I
cannot
address in detail. I will address only four broad issues.

1. The indigenist claim for a local evolution of the Sintashta-Arkaim
complex east of the Urals is supported by virtually no archaeological
evidence. Sintashta-Arkaim developed around 2100/2000 calB.C. out of
the
Late Middle Bronze Age cultures of the Don-Volga region--Late
Poltavka,
Abashevo, and Potapovka--and was clearly intrusive east of the Urals.
It
established new economic, ritual, and typological patterns in the
northern
steppes that were inherited and elaborated in the Andronovo and Timber
Grave
horizons; together these created one cultural horizon from the
Carpathians
to the Tien Shan. The earliest dates for Timber Grave and Andronovo
are
about 1900/1800 calB.C. Petrovka is earliest Andronovo and later than
Sintashta-Arkaim, stratified above Sintashta deposits at Ust'e and
Krivoe
Ozero.

2. The Andronovo horizon is not as weakly defined as Lamberg-Karlovsky
says.
Andronovo displays similar graves, bronze weapons and tools,
ornaments,
house types, and settlement types. Andronovo communities shared
decorative
motifs, aesthetics, and broadly similar agro-pastoral economies. Two
major
variants quickly emerged: a more conservative Alakul (northern
steppes) and
an innovating Federovo (eastern Kazakhstan); Federovo may well reflect
the
adoption of Andronovo customs by various local ethnic groups. But the
spread
of Indo-Iranian languages did not require the spread of a single
ethnic
group. Like the Scythian-Saka horizon of a later era, the Andronovo
horizon
was almost certainly polyethnic but still could represent a single set
of
related Indo-Iranian dialects. The recitation of hymns at public
sacrificial
feasts described in the Rigveda was probably the medium through which
Indo-Iranian dialects were linked to the spread of the Andronovo
mortuary
ritual complex.

3. There are many similarities between Sintashta or Andronovo customs
and
those of the Avesta and the Rigveda. The Vedic and Avestan people were
pastoralists--milk and butter were the symbols of prosperity and, with
cattle and horses, the proper offerings to the gods. They used
chariots and
celebrated war. Their only important female deity was Dawn. The
Andronovo
people had an agro-pastoral economy, used chariots, and regularly
buried
their young men with status weapons. The mortuary ceremonies described
in
the Rigveda included both cremation (as in Federovo) and kurgan graves
(typical of Andronovo). One hymn (Rigveda 10.18) describes a covered
burial
chamber with posts holding up the roof, walls shored up, and the
chamber
sealed with clay--a precise description of Sintashta and Andronovo
grave
pits. In the Rigveda, sacrificed cattle and horses have their limbs
carefully cut off and laid out, a custom typical of Andronovo graves.
The
irrigation farmers of the Bactrian Margiana complex had no horses or
chariots, lived in brick-built walled towns (the abode of the enemy
Others
in the Rigveda), had an important female deity, and did not build
kurgan
cemeteries or place cattle limbs in their graves. Their connection to
the
Rigveda and the Avesta is based entirely on supposed "fire temples"
and
ritual deposits of ephedra--the soma of Vedic rituals. But soma was
not
known among other Indo-European groups, so Indo-Iranians probably
adopted it
from an eastern culture. The Indo-Iranian word for the soma plant
(ancu) was
borrowed from a non-Indo-European substrate language along with words
for
"brick," "plowshare," and "camel" (Lubotsky n.d.). The language of the
Bactrian Margiana towns might well have been that substrate. Andronovo
people lived on the outskirts of these towns, and Andronovo pots were
placed
in the temple rooms where soma was used. About 1650-1500 B.C. all of
these
towns were abandoned, and pastoral economies spread across Iran. A
group of
chariot warriors appeared among the Mitanni in northern Syria whose
personal
names and oaths referred to deities and concepts central in the
Rigveda and
whose language was a dialect of the Sanskrit of the Rigveda. The
peculiar
gods (Indra), some myths, and dialect of the Rigveda probably
developed
among a southern Andronovo population during centuries of interaction
with
the Bactrian Margiana complex prior to the Indic spread across Iran
(Mitanni) and Pakistan. Iranian dialects probably entered Iran later.

4. DNA rarely helps to connect archaeology with language. Language
boundaries and material culture boundaries coincide under some
circumstances, but these ethnolinguistic frontiers are almost never
genetic--people marry across them. Material-culture frontiers that
persist
in one place over many centuries are usually ethnolinguistic. This
happens
at sharp ecological boundaries, where contrasting subsistence,
settlement,
and prestige systems generate a cultural frontier that can persist for
long
periods. Persistent ethnolinguistic frontiers also occur at the edges
of
regions recently colonized by substantial numbers of long-distance
migrants
(Brittany/ France, England/Wales, French/German Switzerland). The
ecological
frontier between the river deltas of southern Central Asia/Iran and
the
deserts and steppes was a persistent cultural-economic boundary
between 5000
and 1500 B.C. and therefore probably a linguistic frontier as well.
Given
their core vocabulary of ecological terms, Indo-European languages had
to
originate north of this line, but the spread of Indo-Iranian languages
southward after 1650-1500 B.C. seems to have resulted in the
replacement of
the earlier urban tradition with an assortment of pastoral regional
groups,
not one intrusive culture. The principles that connect language and
material
culture are complicated and not applicable to every situation. Still,
it is
by investigating such principles (see, e.g., Cordell 1997, chap. 11),
rather
than depending on the false hope of DNA, that we will increase our
understanding of the archaeology of language.

YANNIS HAMILAKIS
Department of Archaeology, University of
Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, U.K.
(y.ham...@soton.ac.uk). 19 IX 01

This important, closely argued case study adds to the growing
literature
demonstrating that ethnic identifications (and their linguistic
equivalents)
are rarely tightly divided and defined and their links with material
culture
not subject to homologically exact correlations (cf. Jones 1997:
119-27).
And I am in full agreement with Lamberg-Karlovsky's description of
ethnicity
as a fluid construct rather than a fixed, primordial reality.

Being unfamiliar with the specific chronological and social context of
this
paper, I will limit my comments to the broader issues of the
production of
archaeological pasts in the present, ethnicity and nationalism, and
the
politics of identity. My feeling is that this study does not go far
enough.
A critique of archaeology as a device that produces essentialist
typologies
of community identities with their assumed material-culture
isomorphism
should not simply question the lack of empirical support of the
exercise; it
should expose and undermine its ontological, epistemological, and
political
foundations. The phenomena that Lamberg-Karlovsky critiques are not
simply a
matter of "nationalist bias" which can be avoided by adopting a
presumably
neutral, objectified approach. All attempts to tell stories about the
past
are implicated in the discourse of identity (cf. Friedman 1992);
moreover,
the construction of (often static and typologically fixed) identities
is
intrinsic to the foundation of the enterprise of archaeology. Indeed,
at
least in European contexts, archaeology as an independent discipline
owes
much to the dominant discourse of identity in modernity that is
nationalism.
Accordingly, concepts, methodologies, and terminology often carry with
them
this heritage, despite the recent sophisticated developments in both
theory
and methodology. Lamberg-Karlovsky's paper does not seem to be immune
to
this, as his use (albeit with qualifications) of the concept of
"archaeological culture" (a key notion of static, primordialist ideas
of
ethnicity) reveals.

Our critique of essentialist narratives in archaeology should be part
of a
broader interrogation of the nature of archaeological enquiry, the
methodologies and theoretical concepts deployed (including the use of
terminology), and the political roles in which archaeological
discourses and
practices are involved today. I have suggested elsewhere (Hamilakis
1999)
that archaeology should be seen not as the pursuit of the "truth"
about the
past on the basis of a supposedly preexisting archaeological record
but
rather as cultural production, dealing with stories and narratives
about the
past in the present--that is, as discourse (logos) on ancient things
and as
a framework of practices, institutions, and narratives intricately
linked to
the present. In this sense, archaeologists produce the "archaeological
record" out of existing, fragmented traces of the past, a process
which is
subject to the tensions and dynamics of the present. The interrogation
of
essentialist narratives on the past such as the invention of fixed
ethnic
and linguistic groups becomes, therefore, part of the broader
interrogation
of the genealogy, social history, and political economy of the
archaeological enterprise. Furthermore, the narrative strategies
deployed in
the production of archaeological stories, the emplotment of material
traces,
events, and processes into a single narrative--in other words, the
metahistory of the archaeological enterprise (cf. White 1972)--should
be
part of this broader project of critique (cf. Pluciennik 1999), a
prerequisite for the production of alternative, more open and
reflexive
archaeologies.

This project cannot proceed by ignoring the political and power
dynamics of
both the genealogy of essentialist discourses on identity and their
present-day implications and effects. Ethnicity and nationalism,
despite
their semantic differences, are part of the same discourse on
identities,
and ethnic categories imposed upon the past are often produced by
relatively
recent national discourses and practices. These power dynamics are
often
played out in broader global contexts and are linked to present-day
power
asymmetries. As Lamberg-Karlovsky notes, in this case the selection of
"Indo-Iranian" as an ethnic linguistic group (amongst many others)
upon
which claims are made on behalf of prehistoric social groups is
curious and
demands explanation. The fact that the producers of this narrative are
themselves speakers of Indo-European languages is undoubtedly a
relevant
factor, but it is important to trace the links (some implied in the
text but
not explored) of this archaeological production with present-day
political
dynamics in the region not only in terms of competing nationalisms but
also
in terms of global negotiations of power, for example, claims to the
political, economic, and cultural Western "Indo-European" present.

Does the application of techniques such as DNA analysis provide a
solution
to these problems, as Lamberg-Karlovsky seems to imply? I doubt it.
Ontologically, any claim to the authority of an assumed objective
arbitrator
is bound to be inadequate unless it examines the "regimes of truth"
that
have produced that authority (cf. Foucault 1980). Besides, group
identities,
as Lamberg-Karlovsky himself notes, are fluid and flexible and not
always
necessarily linked directly to genetic associations (cf. Pluciennik
1996).

Epistemologically, the problems of DNA analysis in archaeology are
severe,
despite its enormous potential in elucidating certain issues about the
past
(cf. Brown and Pluciennik 2001). And politically, a discourse which
moves
the debate on past and present identities onto the ground of genetics,
devoid of social processes, is dangerous and potentially explosive.

JOHANN KNOBLOCH
Sprachwissenschaftliches Institut der Universitat
Bonn, An der Schlosskirche 2, D-53113 Bonn,
Germany. 17 IX 01

The basic technological vocabulary of the Indo-European languages can
in
many cases be shown to go back to the Neolithic. Wilhelm Schulze has
shown
that the Latin words ficta sive picta forma are equivalent to the
Tocharian
tseke si peke si pat arampat, meaning "the beauty of a work of art or
a
painting." The Neolithic String Ware culture tied twisted strings
around a
soft, newly formed clay vessel, and the impressions of these strings
were
filled out with white color to produce ornament. The grooved wares
that
developed from this achieved rather elaborate decoration, as regular
impressions were produced with corresponding grooves. Along with this
there
is also a group of nasal verbs in Latin with similar forms, namely,
fingo,
fingere `mould from clay', stringo, stringere `tie', stinguo,
stinguere
`[originally] stick or prick', and pingo, pingere `paint'. (1)

PHILIP L. KOHL
Department of Anthropology, Wellesley College,
Wellesley, Mass. 02481, U.S.A. (pk...@wellesley.edu).
17 IX 01

Lamberg-Karlovsky has written an important and timely article
critiquing the
tendency, particularly--though by no means exclusively--among certain
Russian archaeologists, to assign linguistic affiliations and/or
ethnic
identities to prehistoric peoples whose "cultures" are known to us
solely on
the basis of material remains. He is cognizant of the historical abuse
of
archaeology for the purpose of making such questionable
identifications. He
explicitly notes some contemporary extreme examples in which once
again
fanciful and dangerous reconstructions of the remote past are made in
order
to glorify a superrace of Aryans or Indo-Iranians. His criticisms are
well-made and pointed, including the observation that such misguided
attempts necessarily exclude other peoples (Turks, Finno-Ugrians,
etc.)whose
distant ancestors also undoubtedly roamed some part of the Eurasian
steppes
during Bronze Age times. In the current age of subjectivity and
relativism,
how does one deal with an "alternative reading" of the past that
excludes
other alternative readings?

Similarly, I find myself in broad agreement with his critique of the
dominant linguistic-divergence model (a multibranched tree with its
trunk
rooted in a mythical homeland) and his suggestion that we concentrate
on the
fusion of languages rather than on their division. If cultures are
never
made but always in the making, as many contemporary theorists would
argue,
then the same is manifestly true for languages, and the search for
ultimate
origins--cultural or linguistic--is largely illusory. The Bronze Age
archaeology of the western Eurasian steppes is striking in the overall
uniformity of materials, shared technologies, and burial rites (e.g.,
pit
grave, catacomb grave, timber grave) stretching across vast distances;
people were communicating with one another, exchanging metals and
occasional
exotic luxury goods, and sometimes physically moving from one area to
another. It is not surprising that they were able to communicate with
each
other through some shared koine. Such a shared system of communication
does
not require a peculiarly gifted people to spread across and dominate
this
vast interconnected zone.

Many interpretations of the archaeology of the Eurasian steppes suffer
from
anachronistic reasoning or what might be termed the Genghis Khan
syndrome
(even though the Great Khan came from the wrong ethnic group!). That
is to
say, current reconstruction of the subsistence economies on the
western
steppes during Bronze Age times unequivocally demonstrates that the
classic
mixed-herd mounted pastoral nomadism that characterized the steppes
during
historic times and that has been amply documented by ethnographers was
not
yet in place. Aside from the question as to when horses were first
domesticated and ridden, peoples were dominantly herding cattle, not
tending
flocks of sheep and goats (with an occasional Bactrian camel tossed
in).
Rather than noble conquering warriors capable of devastating anything
in
their path, the Bronze Age peoples of the western Eurasian steppes
were
impoverished cowboys in ponderous ox-drawn carts seeking richer
pasture and
escape from the severity of the climate, particularly the increasingly
harsh
winters they experienced as they moved eastwards across the rapidly
filling
steppe. This story cannot be followed in detail here, but it is
relevant to
the northern component of the Bactrian Margiana archaeological complex
that
is discussed by Lamberg-Karlovsky. He has reason to suggest that the
"origins" of this complex may ultimately be documented in southern
Afghanistan or Pakistani Baluchistan, as opposed, say, to the western
origins favored by Sarianidi or the northern origins favored by
Kuzmina.

But perhaps this question has been incorrectly posed (and,
paradoxically,
contradicts Lamberg-Karlovsky's own cogent critique of linguistic and
ethnic
origin tales). What I mean is that our concept of archaeological
cultures or
entities that are larger than cultures but somehow related (like the
Bactrian Margiana complex) must be flexible and reflect complex
reality and
constant change. Archaeological cultures should not be viewed as
homogeneous
or growing like plants from single seeds; they are always
heterogeneous and
constantly in the making. The archaeological record clearly shows an
interaction between the world of the steppes and the settled
agriculturalists on the plains of Bactria and Margiana. As
Lamberg-Karlovsky's review of some of this evidence suggests, it is
very
hard to assess the scale and significance of this contact. This,
unfortunately, will probably always be the case precisely because the
archaeological signature of what is steppe and what is sown will
remain
blurred in this area of contact. I believe this record already
documents
perfectly a process of assimilation of peoples from the north with
sedentary
agriculturalists who already participated in a greater cultural
tradition
with millennia-old roots extending back into southern Turkmenistan and
Baluchistan. These northern cowboys changed their way of life and
their
material culture when they entered this more developed sedentary
world. From
this perspective, it is not surprising that steppe ceramics are not
found
farther south on the Iranian plateau but recognizable Bactrian
Margiana-complex materials are. We cannot identify who produced them
or what
language they spoke, but the processes of assimilation, movement, and
interconnection that can be traced reveal how intimately integrated
this
Bronze Age world was.

(1.) Translated by Lynn E. Roller.

JANOS MAKKAY
Institute of Archaeology, uri-utca 49, H 4250 Budapest
L Hungary (mak...@ze.net). 13 IX 01

This paper is an inspiring introduction to the problems not only of
Indo-Iranian origins but also of the results of recent Russian
excavations
in the southern part of the former Soviet Union. My comments relate to
details and to general questions.

1. Reliance on migrations was not "typical of Russian archaeological
interpretations." Childe learned from his visit that Soviet
archaeologists'
explanations did not appeal to "undocumented external factors," and
therefore he devoted more space to Soviet theories of in situ cultural
evolution (Trigger 1980:92, 157; Klejn 1994).

2. The theory of linguistic convergence has failed to meet the
requirements
of the comparative method (Watkins 1995:4). Trubetskoy was an adherent
of
Soviet occult supernationalism, including the suggestion that the
closest
relative of Sanskrit was Russian (see Matthiassen 1985, Reiter 1991,
Troubetskoy 1991), and neither he nor anyone else has ever spelled out
the
details of the theory.

3. That the ancestor of the Indo-Iranian languages may "find its
material
counterpart in the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture of the Ukraine" has long
been
one of Renfrew's convictions (1987:95-98). In fact, the origins of the
Yamna
or Kurgan culture lie in local antecedents between the Dnieper and the
Volga, one of which, as Lamberg-Karlovsky points out, was the Mariupol
group. The Yamna-Kurgan and the Tripolye-Cucuteni are distinguished by
their
long separate local development on opposite sides of the Dnieper
(Makkay
1992a). Renfrew (1999:281) now acknowledges "a continuous and
apparently
unbroken archaeological, and presumably ethnic, development east of
the
Dnieper from the earliest Kurgan period to the appearance of the
Iranian-speaking Sarmatians." The continuity precludes an origin of
the
Yamna in the Late Neolithic Tripolye-Cucuteni cultural group.

4. The Pit Grave, Catacomb Grave, Timber Grave, and Andronovo cultures
represent chronological stages or (for the Andronovo) territorial
variants.
Their sequence and absolute dating are crucial to Indo-Iranian
prehistory.
The wider connections of the Catacomb Grave culture contradict any
dating of
it to the 3d millennium B.C. A complete Late Tripolye bowl found in
the Aul
Uliap cemetery (in Adigey territory), kurgan grave 4, grave 10, has a
very
well-dated counterpart from Tripolye territory: in the Usatovo I
cemetery
(the last phase of the Tripolye sequence), grave 12/2, yielded a
typical
Maikop vessel (Makkay 1992b). Such connections are typical of the
Tripolye,
Sredni Stog, and Early Yamna cultures, making the contemporaneity of
particular phases of them quite certain: early Sredni Stog is equated
with
Tripolye B, Late Sredni Stog with Tripolye C1 and C2. (the Usatovo
phase),
Early Yamna with Tripolye C2-Usatovo, and Classic Maikop with Late
Tripolye
(Makkay 1992a). Grave 4 of a 3.5-m-high kurgan at Krasnogvardeisk in
the
northern Caucasus has yielded a contracted skeleton securely dated to
the
early or early middle phase of the Maikop culture. Four of the six
vessels
found with it are paralleled by pottery forms from the Maikop royal
burial.
A cylinder seal made of jet is the first indication of the symbolic
use of
the cylinder north of the Caucasus and is in all probability a local
imitation of North Mesopotamian-North Syrian prototypes dated to about
the
middle of the 3d millennium mc. at the earliest (Makkay 1994).
Therefore
only an absolute dating of Late Tripolye to the 26th-27th centuries is
plausible. This contradicts recent absolute datings of the
(post-Sredni
Stog) Yamna phases to the 4th or even 5th millennium B.C. and
suggestions of
long-distance trade between the Uruk IV system and the Trans-Caucasian
Maikop cultural area around the middle of the 4th millennium B.C.
(Sherratt
1999:271).

5. I agree that the Russian arguments are not enough to indicate the
ethnic
and linguistic identity of the Andronovo remains. Chlenova (1984)
shows a
correspondence between Iranian place-names and the distribution of the
Timber Grave, Andronovo, and related cultural groups. Place-names of
Indo-Aryan character are scattered or absent in that area. The
distribution
of Scythian and related cultures around the middle of the 1st
millennium
B.C. neatly covers the same area. The Altaic protolanguage is much
more a
matter of imagination than one of comparative linguistics (see Miller
1991),
and it is axiomatic in Uralic studies that groups speaking Uralic
(Finno-Ugric, etc.) dialects never lived either south of the forest
(taiga)
belt or in Central Asia during the millennia after the retreat of the
ice
sheet. (1) I therefore favor a tentative identification of Andronovo
(and
related groups) with quite early Iranian dialects, of course with most
of
Lamberg-Karlovsky's important reservations and modifications.

Lamberg-Karlovsky's critical approach to the supernationalist wave now
inundating the new Russian empire is very important. However, I
consider the
fortified sites of the "country of towns" to have been sacred
enclosures,
local variants of much earlier and partly contemporary parallels found
in
the more western areas of the Central European Linear Pottery culture
and
its descendants (Makkay 2001).

6. Childe's remark about the attitude toward undocumented external
factors
in Soviet archaeology seems to correspond well with
Lamberg-Karlovsky's
observations during his visits to Gonur, Togolok, and Djarkutan:
unexplored
stratigraphic sequences, the nearly total lack of stratigraphic
periodization of 2.5 m of accumulation, etc. Most of the excavations
and
publications in the area of the Bactrian Margiana complex seem to me
short
of detailed scientific values. Therefore the observations of a
colleague
from abroad may greatly benefit those at home.

(1.) There is one exception--the later protohistory of
Proto-Hungarian, the
speakers of which migrated south from the West or East Uralic taiga
belt
around the middle of the 1st millennium A.D. Renfrew (1992:2) is right
when
he writes that the ultimate (i.e, pre-Mesolithic) origins of the
Uralic
family may well lie in the areas that are now steppe lands.

J. P. MALLORY
School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen's
University, Belfast, Northern Ireland
(j.ma...@qub.ac.uk). 12 IX 01

There are at least two issues raised by this wide-ranging paper that
seem to
invite comment. The first concerns what I take to be critical
hyperbole
regarding the identification of either the steppe cultures or the
Bactrian
Margiana complex with Indo-Iranian. While we may agree that there is
no
one-to-one relationship between material remains and language, there
are
still degrees of geo-linguistic plausibility. For example, that
Altaic,
Ugric (I think Lamberg-Karlovsky must mean Finno-Ugric here), and
Elamo-Dravidian have equal claims on the areas involved with
Indo-Iranian is
not impossible but surely not very probable. From the earliest written
testimony of the 1st millennium B.C. it appears that almost the entire
region discussed was occupied, according to tribal and personal names
and
the occasional item of vocabulary, by the eastern branch of Iranian
(Mallory
and Mair 2000, Mallory n.d.). We can chart the later evidence for
Turkish
(Altaic) presence in this area, so it is at least very unlikely that
Andronovo was Altaic. I know of no one who assigns the Finno-Ugric
languages
to the steppe lands (the reconstructed vocabulary of all the branches
is
adamantly arboreal and reflects largely a hunting-gathering-fishing
economy,
with later Indo-Iranian loanwords providing our earliest evidence of
stock
breeding and agriculture [see Napolskikh 1997]). That the Bactrian
Margiana
complex was Elamo-Dravidian is possible (see below), but making the
steppe
cultures Elamo-Dravidian (up to the end of Andronovo at ca. 900 B.C.?)
would
require an archaeological performance of Von Daniken-like proportions
to get
the Indo-Iranians from wherever one wants to stash them for several
millennia to their historical locations. The same goes for making the
Andronovans a language family that became extinct before we have any
written
evidence. The only way (logically) out of this corner is either to
accept
Renfrew's (1987:189-97) "Plan A," which sees linguistic continuity in
India
and Iran from the spread of the Neolithic (a position that he himself
has
rightly abandoned [e.g., Renfrew 1999:280-81]), or to assume that the
Indo-European homeland itself was in South (Misra 1992) or Central
Asia
(Nichols 1997), models which throw up other problems so enormous that
they
make the Indo-Iranian issue look like child's play. Andronovo and the
Bactrian Margiana complex really do appear to be the only game(s) in
town,
and Lamberg-Karlovsky has indicated why they appear to be mutually
exclusive
solutions, neither capable of resolving the problem by itself. There
is no
single culture (using the word in the widest--even most
unjustified--sense)
that can link the Indus, Iran, Central Asia, and the steppe lands
together.

As Lamberg-Karlovsky indicates, a solution that rests on some "form of
symbiosis" between the steppe tribes and the Bactrian Margiana complex
remains "utterly elusive." For some time I have tried to inch forward
on
this front because I too have felt the inadequacy of employing the
spread of
material culture as proxy evidence for linguistic movement. The
problem here
is not just the long-rehearsed criticism against assuming that pots =
people/ language but that there are clear instances, the Indo-Iranians
being
a case in point, in which there is no hint of the distribution of any
archaeological assemblage that might correlate with the distribution
of the
target language group. The situation is so dire that we can't even
make the
type of mistake Lamberg-Karlovsky warns us about!

Working from first principles, it has seemed to me that archaeologists
engaged in tracing linguistic entities need to concentrate on the
archaeological manifestation of language shift, and this may be
independent
of the trajectories of material culture (Mallory 1992, 1998b).
Language
shift may occur in some obvious instances of subsistence differences,
for
example, the Neolithic models posed by Renfrew (1987) and Bellwood
(2000),
but in many instances I suspect that we are dealing with language
shift due
to social differences that are not obvious in the archaeological
record.

Impressed by Ronald Atkinson's (1994) treatment of the spread of the
Acholi
in Uganda, I think that we should be looking for evidence for
competing
social organizations and attempting to predict which would most likely
bring
about linguistic shift and expansion. Lamberg-Karlovsky (1994) has
already
reviewed the ethnohistorical evidence for suggesting that the Bactrian
Margiana complex might have been organized as a khanate. The
four-tiered
political system evident in Central Asia in historical times bears a
close
resemblance to the four-tiered political structure reconstructed for
Proto-Indo-Iranian by Emile Benveniste (1973). What is of considerable
interest is the highest tier, the one which would incorporate the
greatest
number of people--the * dasyu (Old Indic dasyu, Avestan dahyu). In a
recent
study Lubotsky (n.d.), this term has been regarded as a
non-Indo-European
substrate term that was borrowed into Proto-Indo-Iranian along with a
series
of other words associated with religion (words for "priest," "magic,"
deities, and even "soma"). Lubotsky has suggested that these words may
have
had a Central Asian source, and it seems to me that the Bactrian
Margiana
complex, with its elaborate (to a steppe pastoralist) ritual
architecture,
would make a plausible candidate (and if Elamo-Dravidian, we might at
least
hope for some lexical correlations between the putative loanwords and
their
proposed sources; otherwise, these people may have spoken a language
that
has not survived). My current model, admittedly no more supported by
archaeological evidence than the previous discussion alluded to by
Lamberg-Karlovsky, is to assign some form of Indo-Iranian identity to
the
Andronovo but see their expansion southward in terms of their adoption
of
both political and religious concepts (including material
manifestations of
these concepts) from the Bactrian Margiana complex. The spread of
Indo-Iranian languages then would be through the vector of the
Andronovo
culture on the steppe but by way of the Bactrian Margiana complex to
its
south. Steppe tribes that came into contact with the Bactrian Margiana
complex would be required to retain their language (Indo-Iranian) but
would
gain a more incorporative social organization from their neighbours as
well
as a series of religious concepts and practices, perhaps in the same
way
that the Acholi of Uganda retained their Luo language but gained from
their
Bantu neighbours the more incorporative chiefdom system which
permitted them
to carry both their new social organization and their own language to
the
north (Atkinson 1994). Both the social and the religious organization
(see
Erdosy 1995) of Bactrian Margiana-complex-inspired Indo-Iranians would
then
become the vector for language spread southward. Obviously, all of
this
would require far more intimate relationships between the Andronovo
and the
Bactrian Margiana complex than the existing distribution of "mutually
exclusive" material culture would permit, and what is clearly at
stake, as I
suspect Lamberg-Karlovsky would agree, is our confidence in our
ability to
read the record of social processes from the archaeological record.

SANDRA L. OLSEN
Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 4400 Forbes,
Pittsburgh, Pa. 15213, U.S.A. (olsens@
carnegiemuseums.org). 19 IX 01

Archaeolinguistics is in many ways still in its infancy, and by its
nature
it must rely on extensive cooperation among linguists, archaeologists,
cultural and physical anthropologists, historians, and others.
Comprehensive
collaboration and coordination of data are arduous. Cross-disciplinary
communication is rarely even adequate; the various disciplines depend
upon
quite disparate types of evidence to perform their reconstructions,
and it
is unclear to what degree there is comparability among the different
data
sets; and it has not been established that there are strong
correlations
between shifts in one data set and those in another in a particular
time or
place. There is often a tacit acceptance that suites of cultural
traits,
including language, move in unison across the landscape as though they
were
people. Innumerable historical and modern examples could be given to
contradict that assumption, of course, but at the same time, patterns
often
do emerge. As prehistorians and linguists, we have to decide when the
patterns are sufficient to support a particular model. Such decisions
will
always be subjective to some extent, and thus there will continue to
be
compelling arguments for competing models. Part of the problem is that
there
are so many different ways in which language and culture can be
transferred
from one region to another or from one group of people to the next.
Although
many of the problems may never be resolved, we can definitely improve
upon
our current knowledge.

As Lamberg-Karlovsky points out, before we can fully assess the
utility of
our methods in reconstructing the growth and spread of languages, much
more
groundwork needs to be laid for local chronologies. Chernykh (1992:
296-97)
draws attention to the fact that it can be difficult to demonstrate
internal
transformations of a culture over time. Before any attempts can be
made to
link language to artifacts, it is necessary to understand whether
change
represents one culture's own gradual transformation or the
introduction of
new elements through invasion, migration, or other means. More often,
it is
a blending of the indigenous with the intruding society. Which
language
dominates depends upon the circumstances.

We also need to understand regional spheres of shared cultural
identities
better temporally and spatially. For example, it is becoming clear
that a
"Geometric Comb-Impressed Pottery" cultural sphere existed in the
foreststeppe from the southern Urals eastward to northern Kazakhstan
during
the Eneolithic or Copper Age of the 4th millennium (Matyushin 2000,
Shorin
1999). This included the Surtanda, Tersek, Botai, and several other
cultures. Shared traits include relatively large settlements (3 to 9
hectares) of rectangular houses, cord- and comb-impressed pottery with
geometric designs such as hatched triangles, a biface-dominated lithic
industry, and an economy emphasizing horses and possibly other
domesticated
herbivores. It appears likely that this cultural sphere emerged out of
a
Neolithic in the Urals and then spread eastward with the advent of
livestock
husbandry.

These semisedentary herders then may have developed into the nomadic
pastoralists conveniently lumped together as the Andronovo by many
prehistorians. The meridianal migration patterns that persisted among
the
Kazakh herders until 1929 were initiated during the Bronze Age.
Although the
subsequent Iron Age cultures of Kazakhstan, such as the Saka,
continued
using the same migration patterns and buried their important leaders
in
kurgans even larger than those of their immediate predecessors, their
material culture differed dramatically. The Iron Age cultures are
generally
understood to be Indo-Iranian, so whether they emerged out of the
Andronovo
or came from the outside is quite an important issue. There is a small
amount of evidence for the development of "animal-style" art in the
Late
Bronze Age of Kazakhstan, but it does not really begin to flourish
until the
Iron Age. The exquisitely comb-impressed Bronze Age pots are succeeded
by
the poorly made plainware vessels of the Iron Age. Large metal
cauldrons and
stone and bronze censors appear, and gold objects become remarkably
abundant
in the more important kurgans. At least three so-called gold men have
now
been found in Kazakhstan. Mythological beasts including the sphinx,
the
griffin, and the winged horse become prevalent icons. To date, only
horned
horses are visible icons in the Bronze Age of Kazakhstan, if the
petroglyphs
at Tamgaly are indeed Bronze Age.

It would seem necessary first to establish whether the Andronovo
evolved
into the Iron Age cultures, were replaced, or were absorbed by
external
forces before it is possible to state that the Andronovo were
Indo-Iranian
as Kuzmina (1994) believes. The fact that they practiced meridianal
migration of the same livestock over the same territory is not
adequate
support for the idea of a smooth indigenous transformation from the
Bronze
Age to the Iron Age or a common language stock. The Kazakhs speak a
Turkic
language and until recently used the land in much the same way as the
Andronovo did. We do not assume that the Andronovo spoke a Turkic
language
because we know that the Kazakhs have a fairly recent history in this
region.

Much exciting archaeological investigation is currently being
undertaken in
Kazakhstan as elsewhere, so I am optimistic that future scholars will
be
better equipped to flesh out our rather sketchy models for the spread
of
languages. For now, it is important that more surveys and
settlement-pattern
studies be implemented, that thorough analyses of artifact technology,
style, and raw-material sources be conducted, and that communication
across
disciplines and political borders be increased.

COLIN RENFREW
Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge,
Cambridge CB2 3D2, U.K. (da...@cam.ac.uk). 3 IX 01

Lamberg-Karlovsky correctly states that "ethnicity and language are
not
easily linked with an archaeological signature," and he is certainly
right
that, if it is assumed that the prototypes for the Indo-Iranian
languages
reached the Iranian plateau and the Indian subcontinent from the
north, then
the archaeological mechanism of their transmission remains deeply
mysterious. Yet at the same time there are few serious scholars of
Indo-European today who would situate an Indo-European homeland in the
Indian subcontinent, and therefore such a transmission seems likely to
have
taken place. Many scholars today would situate Proto-Indo-Iranian in
the
Eurasian steppes at about the time of the Andronovo culture. Yet
Sarianidi
has indeed suggested that there are features of the Bactrian Margiana
archaeological complex at about the same time which could be relevant
to the
issue.

However, the problem does have to be set in a wider context, and
Lamberg-Karlovsky oversimplifies when he asserts that "the PIE
community
split into two major groups. One group migrated west to Europe and
became
speakers of Indo-European ... while the other headed east to Eurasia
to
become speakers of Indo-Iranian." Many Indo-Europeanists would today
agree
that the first of many splits was between Proto-Anatolian and "narrow"
Proto-Indo-European (see Drews 2001) and that the branching off of
Indo-Iranian came rather later, as Ringe and Warnow have shown (Warnow
1997). Moreover, the populations of the steppe lands in the 1st
millennium
B.C. and for some centuries after (Sarmatians, Scythians, Saka,
Khotanese,
Sogdians, et al.) spoke languages which were in most documented cases
within
the Iranian subfamily. This is one strong argument why the earlier
steppe
populations, for instance, of the Andronovo culture, may well be
thought to
have spoken a Proto-Iranian or Proto-Indo-Iranian language or
languages. Yet
at the same time it should be borne in mind that one important eastern
Indo-European language-- Tocharian--does not belong to the
Indo-Iranian
subfamily. Any acceptable solution will need also to account for that
circumstance.

Mallory (1998b) summarizes the problems very well in his contribution
to the
publication of the Philadelphia conference organized by Victor Mair,
in
which Hiebert (1998) also draws attention to the potential relevance
of the
Bactrian Margiana archaeological complex. Mallory indicates a series
of
three "fault lines" of geographical significance: the Dniester-Dnieper
line,
the Ural line, and the Central Asian line (separating the steppes from
the
Iranian plateau), of which the third is particularly relevant.

It is in my view evident that these problems will not be resolved
until
there is a clearer appreciation that in the steppe lands the horse was
not
used for military purposes until harnessed to pull the spoked-wheel
chariot
in the early 2d millennium B.C. (Kuzmina 1994, Anthony and Vinogradov
1995)
and not ridden in warfare until the end of the 2d millennium (Kuzmina
1994,
Renfrew 1998), although, as Lamberg-Karlovsky states, it is documented
as a
mount for messengers some centuries earlier in the Near East (see
Oates
n.d.). As Levine (1999) has shown, the domestication of the horse was
a
complex process in which cavalry came millennia after hippophagy.

The problem remains one of the most puzzling in Indo-European studies.
I
suspect that the presence of Indo-Aryan (not Indo-Iranian) in the
Mitanni
texts gives a hint that Proto-Indo-Iranian is to be set rather earlier
than
some have placed it, perhaps in the 3d millennium B.C. There is no
reason
that the Bactrian Margiana archaeological complex should not be part
of the
story: it could well have contributed soma to the Indo-Iranian
cultural
tradition of India without its populations' speaking an Indo-European
language. So perhaps Lamberg-Karlovsky presents us with a misleading
dichotomy in setting the Bactrian Margiana complex and the Andronovo
culture
into a kind of antithesis. Both may well be part of the story. He is
surely
right to stress its complexity in his useful review.

ANDRAS RONA-TAS
Csorsz U. 1, H-1123 Budapest, Hungary
(aron...@axelro.hu). 13 IX 01

Lamberg-Karlovsky argues that the more or less contemporaneous
Andronovo and
Bactrian-Margiana archaeological complexes are different
archaeological
cultures and that we have no way of determining the language spoken by
the
bearers of a remote archaeological culture. From this he concludes
that
these cultures could have been Indo-Iranian, Dravidian, Altaic, or any
combination of the three. As a linguist who uses linguistic data for
historical reconstruction, I agree with his methodological approach
and have
learned a lot from his paper, but I have some comments to add.

1. The type of human language that linguists deal with developed in
the
Neolithic Age. Stability of grammatical structure requires long-term
feedback for which the sociological conditions were not present in the
Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, when small groups were constantly on the
move.
Linguistic families could have been consolidated, from whatever
antecedents,
only in the Neolithic. This excludes the possibility of any such
"megaprotolanguage" as the Nostratic school.

2. There are serious problems in determining the chronology of the
Common
Altaic protolanguage. The question is not whether an Altaic
protolanguage
existed but how shared linguistic material due to early contacts can
be
distinguished from that inherited from the supposed Common Altaic.
Whatever
the answer to this question, it is very unlikely that in the
chronological
range of Andronovo and the Bactrian Margiana complex a Common Altaic
(still)
existed. This means that the possible languages of the bearers of
these
archaeological cultures can only be Turkic or Mongolian (for several
reasons
I would exclude Manchu-Tunguzian and other supposed Altaic languages
such as
Korean or Japanese).

3. The cultures reflected by the lexical stocks of the Turkic and
Mongolian
protolanguages had highly developed animal husbandry with horses,
limited
knowledge of agriculture, and almost no signs of sedentarism. Turkic
or
Mongolian could be connected with the Bactrian Margiana complex only
if we
were to suppose that after the dissolution of that complex they lost
the
lexical groups that must have been present in it. This is unlikely.
Both
Proto-Turkic and Proto-Mongolian could, however, reflect a culture
like the
Andronovo.

4. The Andronovo population could have spoken languages belonging to
other
linguistic families. The linguist can prove the existence of a
multilingual
society by demonstrating early linguistic contacts from the period
under
discussion (2d millennium B.C.) that do not contradict the cultural
background reflected by the archaeological material. At present
historical-linguistic efforts in Altaic studies have been successful
in
going back to the last few hundred years of the 1st millennium B.C.
(see
Rona-Tas 1991, 1998). The gap between the middle of the 2d and the
middle of
the 1st millennium B.C. is bridged only by vague hypotheses with a
handful
of starred forms.

5. There are, as far as I know, no contemporary studies on early
contacts
between Ancient Turkic and Tocharian (Rona-Tas 1974, on which see
Reinhart
1990, and Rona-Tas 1991) or between Ancient Turkic and Iranian (not to
speak
of Indo-Iranian [see Rona-Tas 1988]). This is not the case with
Finno-Ugric
(Korenchy 1972, Joki 1973, Harmata 1977, Redei 1986).

6. Though language may be one of the most important indicators of
ethnic
identity, ethnos and language-speaking community are by definition two
different entities that may be but are not necessarily identical (see
Rona-Tas 1999:5-15).

7. Replacing the great gaps in our knowledge with unfounded theories
(in
most cases biased by ideology) would interfere with the hard daily
work of
linguistic reconstruction. Future work will be aided by surveys like
that of
Lamberg-Karlovsky.

Reply

C. C. LAMBERG-KARLOVSKY
Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 9 X 01

I am grateful for the informative and challenging responses. It is not
surprising that the majority continue to hold the view that the
bearers of
the Andronovo culture spoke Indo-Iranian. Consensus is not, however,
the
hallmark of all responses. Anthony sees the Andronovo originating in
the
Don-Volga region and migrating eastward, while Sandra Olsen suggests
that
the Surtanda, Botai, and other cultures from the southern Urals to
northern
Kazakhstan "may have developed into the nomadic pastoralists
conveniently
lumped together as Andronovo." Anthony (1995; see also Anthony and
Vinogradov 1995) has written that the Sintashta-Petrovka culture was
the
first Eurasian steppe culture to display traits central to the culture
of
the Indo-Iranians. He believes that specific attributes of that
culture were
later carried into India and Iran by the Vedic Aryans. He makes direct
comparisons between the sacred text of the Rigveda and the
archaeological
record recovered from the Sintashta-Petrovka culture--horse sacrifice,
the
burial of carefully segmented parts of the horse's body, chariotry,
and
sumptuary burial goods. Identifying the Sintashta-Petrovka culture as
Indo-Iranian and relating it to the Vedic Aryans is linking an
archaeological culture of ca. 1900 B.C. with a text written about
1,000
years later. (For a comprehensive and well-balanced study of horses,
chariots, and Indo-Europeans in the context of archaeology and
linguistic
paleontology, see Rauling 2000.)

Anthony subscribes to a linear progression of cultures that begins
with the
Sintashta-Petrovka and gives way to a wide variety of "major
variants,"
including the "conservative" Alakul and the "innovating" Fedorovo.
What
troubles me is that, on the one hand, he characterizes the Andronovo
as
having a cultural "commonality," a sort of primordial, unchanging
culture,
inhabiting the regions from southern Russia to China throughout the 2d
millennium, while on the other hand he asserts that the Andronovo
consists
of a mosaic of cultures (Alakul, Fedorovo, Sintashta-Petrovka, etc.).
Assertions of this sort in the literature, whether English or Russian,
are
rarely supported by demonstrations of the material differences (i.e.,
types
and styles) that characterize the supposedly distinctive Andronovo
cultures.
Philip Kohl's comment is pertinent here: "Archaeological cultures
should not
be viewed as homogeneous or growing like plants from single seeds;
they are
always heterogeneous and constantly in the making." Perhaps it is my
lack of
belief in relating the Sintashta-Petrovka with the Rigveda, separated
as
they are by 1,000 years and almost as many miles, or in the alleged
homogeneity of the Andronovo that Anthony finds "inaccuracies" in my
article.

Hamilakis thinks that I do not go far enough in criticizing the
ontological,
epistemological, and political foundations of archaeology. I think
that he
goes too far in arguing that archaeology is merely "a cultural
production,
dealing with stories and narratives about the past in the present." We
have
all been subjected to postmodernist rhetoric, and Hamilakis is
treading
well-plowed terrain. The past can be as real as the chariots and
wagons
recovered and the reconstructed agro-pastoralist economy of the
steppes.
Over the past century archaeology has done far more than tell
political
"just-so" stories. Its enormous contributions and successes may be
found in
any good introductory text.

Kohl closes his thoughtful comment by stating that the evidence
suggests how
"intimately integrated this Bronze Age world was." But was it? Why,
then,
the relatively sharp boundaries that divide the distribution of the
material
culture in neighboring territories--that of the steppes from the
Bactrian
Margiana culture or that of the Indus from the cultures of the Iranian
Plateau or the culture of Mesopotamia from that of the Gulf? In
reality
material remains from one culture are rarely found in a neighboring
one.
When such an object is found it is typically an elite commodity--a
seal, a
fragment of statuary, or an elaborately carved stone bowl. One might
also
note that there is an asymmetry in the distribution of these foreign
goods.
Thus, steppe materials are found in the Bactrian Margiana complex but
not
the reverse; Indus materials are found in Mesopotamia, but the reverse
is
extremely rare; Bactrian Margiana remains are found on the Iranian
Plateau
and in the Indus Valley but not the reverse. Such asymmetrical
distributions
are probably significant, but their meaning remains elusive. It is
important
to emphasize that the materials evidencing such contact, wherever they
are
found, are quantitatively rare. The Mesopotamian texts, our only
literate
source, are almost completely silent on the extent of their "intimate
integration" with the "other." Texts do refer to a trade in textiles
and
grain, which, as neither survives in the archaeological record, may
balance
the apparent asymmetry in trade relations and amplify its limited
evidence.
The archaeological record, however, certainly supports the conclusion
that
trade emphasized elite goods in a context of their scarcity.
Globalization
characterizes our own day, and therefore, not surprisingly,
archaeologists
entertain the reality of Bronze Age "world systems," a direction
pioneered
by Philip Kohl. If one looks to the limited nature and even more
limited
quantity of the elite materials traded, then the opposite side of the
economic coin suggests an obstinate isolationism rather than an
"intimately
integrated" Bronze Age. Perhaps the relatively slow pace of change,
whether
in the Andronovo or in the Indus Valley, is due to such isolation. As
Jared
Diamond (2000:25; see also 1999) has observed, "In any society except
a
totally isolated one, more innovations are brought from the outside
not
conceived within ... competition between human societies that are in
contact
with each other is what drives the invention of new technology and the
continued availability of technology." In archaeology this view flies
in the
face of what is au courant, namely, "world systems" that attempt to
bring
Bronze Age cultures, on a continental scale, into an integrated sphere
of
economic interaction.

Makkay (2000) has recently reviewed the literature regarding the
relations
between Sintashta, Mycenae, and the Carpathian Basin and the early
Iranians.
Here he offers a complex series of chronological equivalences that
relate
specific phases of the Tripolye, Sredni Stog, Yamna, and Maikop
cultures.
There is a difference of almost a millennium between Makkay's
chronological
reconstruction and recent [C.sup.14] dates, a fact that ensures
controversy.
Makkay's correlations are often made on single artifacts of presumed
stylistic/typological similarity distributed over a vast region and
frequently of dubious provenance. Clearly, the jury is still out
regarding
the dating and correlations that tie the cultures of the west
(Tripolye) to
those of the Caucasus (Maikop) and the Eurasiatic steppe (Yamna).

Mallory enriches and expands the discussion beyond Indo-Iranian
concerns. I
am in agreement with his broad perspective and find his suggestion of
looking at competing institutions to identify the one most likely to
bring
about linguistic shift and expansion an appealing one. However,
competing
institutions within distinctive cultures are likely to engender
conflict and
even warfare, and between the Andronovo and Bactrian Margiana complex
there
is little evidence to suggest either. Unfortunately, processes of
cultural
assimilation, acculturation--indeed, the very nature that brought
about
culture contact--are undertheorized. Until we can comprehend such
processes
in specific archaeological contexts, questions of language shift and
expansion remain moot. Mallory, along with many linguists and not a
few
archaeologists, has a penchant for equating a single archaeological
culture
with a single language. Is it not possible for peoples of the past to
resemble their modern counterparts in Central Asia and the steppes,
where
two or three languages are the norm, where Tadjiks (Iranian-speakers)
marry
Uzbeks (Turkic-speakers) and their children speak Russian?

Renfrew suggests that I create a "misleading dichotomy in setting the
Bactrian Margiana complex and the Andronovo culture into a kind of
antithesis." This is precisely what I meant to do. In their
environmental
settings, subsistence economies, and material cultures, the Andronovo
and
the Bactrian Margiana complex could not be more different. Renfrew
favors an
Indo-Iranian identity for the Andronovo, and he fully realizes that
there is
not a shred of evidence that identifies the Andronovo with the
traditional
homeland of the Indo-Iranian-speakers either on the Iranian Plateau or
in
South Asia. There is, however, clear evidence for a Bactrian Margiana
presence on the Iranian Plateau (Amiet 1984, Hiebert and
Lamberg-Karlovsky
1992) and in South Asia (Jarrige 1993, n.d.). In fact, the extensive
evidence for Bactrian Margiana materials recovered from Susa, Shahdad,
Yahya, Khinaman, Sibri, Nausharo, Hissar, etc., might make it the
prime
candidate for Indo-Iranian arrival on the Iranian Plateau. The problem
is
that the distinctive material culture of the Bactrian Margiana complex
utterly vanishes, apparently completely assimilated by the indigenous
cultures of the Iranian Plateau. In this context one might borrow a
valuable
concept advanced by Renfrew and suggest that the Indo-Iranian-speaking
Bactrian Margiana complex represented elite dominance and the
indigenous
peoples, although in the majority, adopted their language. How would
one
verify such a concept in the archaeological record?

Rona-Tas appears to avoid the Indo-Iranians entirely and suggests that
both
Proto-Turkic and Proto-Mongolian could "reflect a culture like the
Andronovo." Such diversity among the Andronovo appeals to me. Framing
the
question as what language the Andronovo spoke is, I believe,
misdirected.
The Andronovo was made up of many cultures subject to constant change;
some
may have spoken Indo-Iranian, others Proto-Turkic, and yet others
Proto-Mongolian, and, pace Mallory, there may have been an occasional
Finno-Ugric-speaker among the lot.

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C. C. LAMBERG-KARLOVSKY is Stephen Philips Professor of Archaeology in
the
Department of Anthropology at Harvard University and Curator of Near
Eastern
Archaeology at Harvard's Peabody Museum (Cambridge, Mass. 02138,
U.S.A.
[karl...@fas.harvard.edu]). Born in 1937, he was educated at
Dartmouth
College (B.A., 1959) and the University of Pennsylvania (M.A., 1964;
Ph.D.,
1965). His research interests concern the nature of the interaction
between
the Bronze Age civilizations of the Near East and their contemporary
neighbors of the Iranian Plateau, the Indus Valley, the Arabian
Peninsula,
and Central Asia. His recent publications include Beyond the Tigris
and
Euphrates Bronze Age Civilizations (Tel Aviv: Ben Gurion University of
the
Negev Press, 1996) and (with Daniel Potts et al.) Excavations at Tepe
Yahya,
Iran: Third Millennium (American School of Prehistoric Research
Bulletin
42). The present paper was submitted 23 VII 00 and accepted 29 V 01.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/CA/journal/contents/v43n1.html

[sirknight67]

Doorood Qizilbash,
thank you for the interesting article.
After extensive research of my own, I too have come to favor the
Ponto-Caspian steppes of southern Russia/eastern Ukraine/western
kazakhstan, based on what I read and works frmo a number of scholars
such as Torday, Mair, Mallory,Ishjams,Yong, Cavalli and Sforza.
Thre seems to be enough evidence however to trace the lineage of Aryan
cultures and cultures more or less chronologically, although some seem
to overlap. This include Srubnaja and Andronovo, as well as the BMAC
(Bactria Margianna complex as you mentioned).
The problem of solving the INdo-European homeland has obsessed
archeologists and linguists for a few centuries although I feel that
studies of genetics and mitochodrial DNA have recently set many
suspissions to rest and the age old Anatolian homeland has been
disproved.

I remember reading a book by a German author named Kephart, about 18
years ago (half a lifetime away!). He wrote in the 1930's, at a time
when German "scientists" commonly believed that the Central Asian
steppes and even the Himalayas were the cradle of the Indo-Europeans.
There were several expeditions even, bent on discovering this craddle
which was eventually never found, other than in the romantic dreams of
the Long lost homeland theorists.