Khvalynsk culture
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The Khvalynsk culture
Dating
A number of calibrated C-14 readings obtained from material in the graves of the type site date the culture certainly to the approximate window, 5,000–4,500 BCE. This material is from Khvalynsk I, or Early Khvalynsk. Khvalynsk II, or Late Khvalynsk, is Late Eneolithic. Asko Parpola regards Khvalynsk culture to be c. 5,000 to 3,800 BCE.[3]
Nina Morgunova regards Khvalynsk I as Early Eneolithic, contemporary with the second stage of Samara culture called Ivanovka and Toksky stage, which pottery was influenced by Khvalynsk culture,[4] as calibrated period of this second stage of Samara culture is 4,850–3,640 BCE.[5] Marija Gimbutas, however, believed Samara was earlier and placed Khvalynsk I in the Developed Eneolithic.
Not enough Samara culture dates and sites exist to settle the question. After c. 4,500 BCE, Khvalynsk culture united the lower and middle Volga sites keeping domesticated sheep, goats, cattle, and maybe horses.[6]
Sites
The Khvalynsk type site is a cemetery, 30 m by 26 m, containing about 158 skeletons, mainly in single graves, but some two to five together. They were buried on their backs with knees contracted. Twelve of the graves were covered with stone cairns. Sacrificial areas were found similar to those at Samara, containing horse, cattle and sheep remains.
An individual grave was found in 1929 at Krivoluchie with grave goods and the remains placed on ochre, face up, knees contracted.
Artifacts
Khvalynsk evidences the further development of the kurgan. It began in the Samara with individual graves or small groups sometimes under stone. In the Khvalynsk culture one finds group graves, which can only be communal on some basis, whether familial or local or both is not clear. With the advent of better methods of recovering ancient DNA, perhaps someday it will be.
Although there are disparities in the wealth of the grave goods, there seems to be no special marker for the chief. This deficit does not exclude the possibility of a chief. In the later kurgans, one finds that the kurgan is exclusively reserved for a chief and his retinue, with ordinary people excluded.
This development suggests a growing disparity of wealth, which in turn implies a growth in the wealth of the whole community and an increase in population. The explosion of the kurgan culture out of its western steppe homeland must be associated with an expansion of population. The causes of this success and expansion remain obscure.
We do know that metal was available both in the
There is also plenty of evidence of personal jewelry: beads of shell, stone and animal teeth, bracelets of stone or bone, pendants of boar tusk. The animals whose teeth came to decorate the putative Indo-Europeans are boar, bear, wolf, deer and others.[citation needed] Some of these teeth must have been difficult to acquire, a labor perhaps that led to a value being placed upon them. Whether they were money is not known.
The hard goods leave no record of any great richness. There is some evidence that wealth may have consisted of perishable goods. In fact, in many similar cultures of later times, wealth was reckoned in livestock. A recent study of the surface of the pottery (also of many cultures), which recorded contact with perishable material while the clay was wet, indicates contact with cords and embroidered woven cloth, which the investigators suggest were used to decorate the pot.
Physical type
Early examination of physical remains of the Khvalynsk people determined that they were
Genetics
Recent genetic studies have shown that males of the Khvalynsk culture carried primarily the paternal
Mathieson et al. (2015, 2018) found in three
A male from the contemporary
Notes
- ^ /xvɑːˈlɪnsk, kvɑː-/; Russian: Хвалынская культура, pronounced [xvɐˈlɨnskəjə kʊlʲˈturə]
- ^ "[M]assive broad-faced proto-Europoid type is a trait of post-Mariupol’ cultures, Sredniy Stog, as well as the Pit-grave culture of the Dnieper’s left bank, the Donets, and Don. The features of this type are somewhat moderated in the western part of the steppe... All the anthropological types of the Pit-grave culture population have indigenous roots... The heir of the Neolithic Dnieper-Donets and Sredniy Stog cultures was the Pit-grave culture. Its population possessed distinct Europoid features, was tall, with massive skulls. The second component were the descendants of those buried in the Eneolithic cemetery of Khvalynsk. They are less robust."[7]
References
- ^ Mallory, J.P. "Khvalynsk Culture". In Mallory & Adams (1997), p. 328.
- ^ Mallory, J.P. "Samara Culture". In Mallory & Adams (1997), p. 498.
- ^ Parpola, Asko, 2012. "Formation of the Indo-European and Uralic (Finno-Ugric) language families in the light of archaeology: Revised and integrated 'total' correlations", in Linguistic Map of Prehistoric North Europe, Helsinki, p. 122.
- ^ Morgunova, Nina L., 2015. "Pottery from the Volga area in the Samara and South Urals region from Eneolithic to Early Bronze Age", in Documenta Praehistorica XLII (2015), pp. 311, 315, and Table 2. [The first stage in Samara culture is called Sjezheye dated from 5300 to 4800 BCE, see Morgunova 2015, p. 314 and Table 1].
- ^ Morgunova, Nina L., 2015. "Pottery from the Volga area in the Samara and South Urals region from Eneolithic to Early Bronze Age", in Documenta Praehistorica XLII (2015), p. 315.
- ^ Anthony 2019a, p. 13.
- ^ Kuzmina 2007, pp. 383–384.
- ^ Anthony 2019a, pp. 10–13.
- ^ Mathieson et al. 2015.
- ^ Mathieson et al. 2018.
- ^ Anthony 2019b, p. 36.
- ^ Anthony 2019a, pp. 13–19.
- PMID 36007055.
Sources
- ISBN 978-0691058870.
- Anthony, David (Spring–Summer 2019a). "Archaeology, Genetics, and Language in the Steppes: A Comment on Bomhard". Journal of Indo-European Studies. 47 (1–2): 1–23. Retrieved 9 January 2020.
- ISBN 978-9004416192.
- ISBN 978-9004160545.
- Mallory, J. P. (1991). In Search of the Indo-Europeans: Language Archeology and Myth. Thames & Hudson.
- Mallory, J.P.; Adams, Douglas Q., eds. (1997). ISBN 978-1-884964-98-5.
- ISBN 0-06-250337-5
- Mathieson, Iain; et al. (23 November 2015). "Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians". PMID 26595274.
- Mathieson, Iain; et al. (21 February 2018). "The Genomic History of Southeastern Europe". PMID 29466330.