Samara culture
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Mal'ta | |
| Followed by | Khvalynsk culture |
|---|---|
The Samara culture is an
Place and time
The Samara culture is an
The valley of the Samara river contains sites from earlier cultures as well (including the Elshanka culture), which are descriptively termed "Samara cultures" or "Samara valley cultures". Some of these sites are currently under excavation. "The Samara culture" as a proper name, however, is reserved for the early eneolithic of the region.
Artifacts
Pottery
Pottery consists mainly of egg-shaped beakers with pronounced rims. They were not able to stand on a flat surface, suggesting that some method of supporting or carrying must have been in use, perhaps basketry or slings, for which the rims would have been a useful point of support. The carrier slung the pots over the shoulder or onto an animal. Decoration consists of circumferential motifs: lines, bands, zig-zags or wavy lines, incised, stabbed or impressed with a comb. These patterns are best understood when seen from the top. They appear then to be a solar motif, with the mouth of the pot as the sun. Later developments of this theme show that in fact the sun is being represented.
Sacrificial objects
The culture is characterized by the remains of animal sacrifice, which occur over most of the sites. There is no indisputable evidence of riding, but there were horse burials, the earliest in the Old World.[9] Typically the head and hooves of cattle, sheep, and horses are placed in shallow bowls over the human grave, smothered with ochre. Some have seen the beginning of the horse sacrifice in these remains, but this interpretation has not been more definitely substantiated. It is known that the Indo-Europeans sacrificed both animals and people, like many other cultures.
Graves
The graves found are shallow pits for single individuals, but two or three individuals might be placed there.
Some of the graves are covered with a stone cairn or a low earthen mound, the very first predecessor of the kurgan[citation needed]. The later, fully developed kurgan was a hill on which the deceased chief might ascend to the sky god, but whether these early mounds had that significance is doubtful.
Grave offerings included ornaments depicting horses. The graves also had an overburden of horse remains; it cannot yet be determined decisively if these horses were domesticated and ridden or not, but they were certainly used as a meat-animal. Most controversial are bone plaques of horses or double oxen heads, which were pierced.
The graves yield well-made daggers of flint and bone, placed at the arm or head of the deceased, one in the grave of a small boy. Weapons in the graves of children are common later. Other weapons are bone spearheads and flint arrowheads.
Other carved bone figurines and pendants were found in the graves.
Middle Volga culture
The Samara culture was preceded by the Middle Volga culture that flourished in the 6th millennium BCE.
Archaeogenetics
Genetic analyses of a male buried at Lebyazhinka, radiocarbon dated to 5640-5555 BP, found that he belonged to a population often referred to as "Samara hunter-gatherers", a group closely associated with
Notes
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- ^ a b c There are several datings available.
- Gimbutas dated it to 5000 BCE.
- According to V.A. Dergachev (2007), О скипетрах, о лошадях, о войне: Этюды в защиту миграционной концепции М. Гимбутас, .
- Mallory and Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, gives the bare date "fifth millennium BCE", while the Khvalynsk culture, its reported successor, is dated at 4900–3500 BCE.
References
- S2CID 221885294.
- .
- ^ a b c Anthony 2007, p. 189.
- ^ "Местонахождение Варфоломеевка". February 2018.
- ^ "Мезолит и неолит Северо-Западного Прикаспия". 2005.
- ^ Anthony 2007, p. 182.
- ^ Anthony 2007, p. 175.
- doi:10.4312/dp.42.22.
- ISBN 9789004160545.
- PMID 25731166
- ^ Mathieson 2015.
- ^ Mathieson 2018.
Sources
- Anthony, David W. (2007). The Horse The Wheel And Language. How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped The Modern World. Princeton University Press.
- ISBN 0-06-250337-5
- J. P. Mallory, "Samara Culture", Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997.
- Mathieson, Iain (November 23, 2015). "Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians". PMID 26595274.
- Mathieson, Iain (February 21, 2018). "The Genomic History of Southeastern Europe". PMID 29466330.
External links
Media related to Samara culture at Wikimedia Commons- The Horse in Mortuary Symbolism...
- Mitochondrial DNA and the origins of the domestic horse
- Widespread Origins of Domestic Horse Lineages
- Factual archaeological description of Samara culture (in Russian) Archived 2018-01-22 at the Wayback Machine
