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Sintashta culture
The Sintashta culture, also known as the Sintashta-Petrovka
Sintashta culture
culture[1] or Sintashta-Arkaim culture,[2] is a Bronze Age
archaeological culture of the northern Eurasian steppe on the borders of Pe riod Bronze Age
Eastern Europe and Central Asia, dated to the period 2100–1800 BCE.[3] Date s 2100–1800 BCE
The culture is named after the Sintashta archaeological site, in Chelyabinsk
Type s ite Sintashta
Oblast, Russia.
M ajor s ite s Sintashta
The Sintashta culture is widely regarded as the origin of the Indo-Iranian Arkaim
languages. The earliest known chariots have been found in Sintashta Petrovka
burials, and the culture is considered a strong candidate for the origin of Characte ris tics Extensive
the technology, which spread throughout the Old World and played an copper and
important role in ancient warfare.[4] Sintashta settlements are also bronze
remarkable for the intensity of copper mining and bronze metallurgy metallurgy
carried out there, which is unusual for a steppe culture.[5] Fortif ied
settlements
Elaborate

Contents w eapon burials

Earliest know n
Origin and spread chariots
Predecessors: Poltavka culture, Abashevo culture, Corded Ware
culture Pre ce de d by Poltavka culture,
Inter-group competition and warfare Abashevo
Proto-Indo-Iranian ethnic and linguistic identity culture
Metal production
See also
Notes
References
Sources
External links

Origin and spread

Predecessors: Poltavka culture, Abashevo culture, Corded Ware culture

The Sintashta culture emerged from the interaction of two antecedent cultures, the Poltavka culture and the Abashevo
culture. Because of the difficulty of identifying the remains of Sintashta sites beneath those of later settlements, the
culture was only recently distinguished from the Andronovo culture.[2] It is now recognised as a separate entity
forming part of the "Andronovo horizon".[1]

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Its immediate predecessor in

the Ural-Tobol steppe was
the Poltavka culture, an
offshoot of the cattle-
herding Yamnaya horizon
that moved east into the
region between 2800 and
According to Allentoft (2015), the
Sintashta culture probably derived 2600 BCE. Several Sintashta
at least partially from the Corded towns were built over older
Ware Culture Poltavka settlements or close
The formative Sintashta-Petrovka
to Poltavka cemeteries, and
culture is shown in red on this map.
Poltavka motifs are common The maximum extent of the
on Sintashta pottery.[6] Andronovo culture is in orange. The
location of the earliest spoke-wheeled
Sintashta material culture also shows the influence of the late Abashevo chariot finds is indicated in magenta.
culture, derived from the Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture, a collection of Adjacent and overlapping cultures
Corded Ware settlements in the forest steppe zone north of the (Afanasevo culture, Srubna culture,
Sintashta region that were also predominantly pastoralist.[6]
BMAC) are shown in olive green.
Allentoft et al. (2015) found close autosomal genetic relationship
between peoples of Corded Ware culture and Sintashta culture, which
"suggests similar genetic sources of the two," and may imply that "the Sintashta derives directly from an eastward
migration of Corded Ware peoples."[7] Sintashta individuals and Corded Ware individuals both had a relatively higher
ancestry proportion derived from the early farmers of Central Europe, and both differed markedly in such ancestry
from the population of the Yamnaya Culture and most individuals of the Poltavka Culture that preceded Sintashta in
the same geographic region.[7][note 1]

Inter-group competition and warfare

The first Sintashta settlements appeared around 2100 BCE, during a period of climatic change that saw the already
arid Kazakh steppe region become even more cold and dry. The marshy lowlands around the Ural and upper Tobol
rivers, previously favoured as winter refuges, became increasingly important for survival. Under these pressures both
Poltavka and Abashevo herders settled permanently in river valley strongholds, eschewing more defensible hill-top
locations.[8]

The Abashevo culture was already marked by endemic intertribal warfare; [9] intensified by ecological stress and
competition for resources in the Sintashta period, this drove the construction of fortifications on an unprecedented
scale and innovations in military technique such as the invention of the war chariot. Increased competition between
tribal groups may also explain the extravagant sacrifices seen in Sintashta burials, as rivals sought to outdo one
another in acts of conspicuous consumption analogous to the North American potlatch tradition.[8] Sintashta artefact
types such as spearheads, trilobed arrowheads, chisels, and large shaft-hole axes were taken east. [10] Many Sintashta
graves are furnished with weapons, although the composite bow associated later with chariotry does not appear.
Sintashta sites have produced finds of horn and bone, interpreted as furniture (grips, arrow rests, bow ends, string
loops) of bows; there is no indication that the bending parts of these bows included anything other than wood. [11]
Arrowheads are also found, made of stone or bone rather than metal. These arrows are short, 50–70 cm long, and the
bows themselves may have been correspondingly short.[11]

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Proto-Indo-Iranian ethnic and linguistic identity

The people of the Sintashta culture are thought to have spoken Proto-Indo-
Iranian, the ancestor of the Indo-Iranian language family. This
identification is based primarily on similarities between sections of the Rig
Veda, an Indian religious text which includes ancient Indo-Iranian hymns
recorded in Vedic Sanskrit, with the funerary rituals of the Sintashta
culture as revealed by archaeology.[12] There is linguistic evidence of
interaction between Finno-Ugric and Indo-Iranian languages, showing
influences from the Indo-Iranians into the Finno-Ugric culture.[13] From
the Sintashta culture the Indo-Iranian languages migrated with the Indo-
Iranians to Anatolia, India and Iran.[14][15] From the 9th century BCE
onward, Iranian languages also migrated westward with the Scythians back
to the Pontic steppe where the proto-Indo-Europeans came from.[15] The approximate present-day
distribution of the Indo-European
branches of Eurasia:
Metal production Indo-Iranian

The Sintashta economy came to revolve around copper metallurgy. Copper

ores from nearby mines (such as Vorovskaya Yama) were taken to Sintashta
settlements to be processed into copper and arsenical bronze. This occurred on an industrial scale: all the excavated
buildings at the Sintashta sites of Sintashta, Arkaim and Ust'e contained the remains of smelting ovens and slag.[8]
Much of this metal was destined for export to the cities of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) in
Central Asia. The metal trade between Sintashta and the BMAC for the first time connected the steppe region to the
ancient urban civilisations of the Near East: the empires and city-states of Iran and Mesopotamia provided an almost
bottomless market for metals. These trade routes later became the vehicle through which horses, chariots and
ultimately Indo-Iranian-speaking people entered the Near East from the steppe.[16][17]

Aerial view of the Arkaim site View of the Arkaim site and Excavation and partial building
surrounding landscape reconstruction

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Arkaim infographic chariot model, Arkaim museum

See also
Sintashta
Arkaim
Petrovka settlement
Country of Towns
Cimmerians

Notes
1. Allentoft et al. (2015) analysed ancient DNA recovered from remains at four Sintashta sites. The five
samples analysed included the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups U2e, J1, J2 and N1a. The two male
individuals both belonged to Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a1.[7]

References
1. Koryakova 1998b.
2. Koryakova 1998a.
3. Anthony 2009.
4. Kuznetsov 2006.
5. Hanks & Linduff 2009.
6. Anthony 2007, pp. 386–388.
7. Allentoft 2015.
8. Anthony 2007, pp. 390–391
9. Anthony 2007, pp. 383–384
10. Rawson, Jessica (Autumn 2015). "Steppe Weapons in Ancient China and the Role of Hand-to-hand
Combat" (https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/41274804/02-
Weapons_final.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1517721410&
Signature=HqKa6M3tO5v9FptVx6b%2B2uaO6LU%3D&response-content-disposition=attachment
%3B%20filename%3DSteppe_Weapons_in_Ancient_China_and_the.pdf) (PDF). The National Palace
Museum Research Quarterly. 33 (1): 49. Retrieved 4 February 2018: See reference 33 - E. N. Chernykh,
Ancient Metallurgy in the USSR, The Early Metal Age, 225, fig. 78.

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11. Bersenev, Andrey; Epimakhov, Andrey; Zdanovich, Dmitry (2011). "Bow and arrow. The Sintasha bow of the
Bronze Age of the south Trans-Urals, Russia". In Marion Uckelmann; Marianne Modlinger; Steven Matthews
(eds.). Bronze Age Warfare: Manufacture and Use of Weaponry (https://s3.amazonaws.com
/academia.edu.documents/31073434
/Bersenev__Epimakhov__Zdanovich_2011.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&
Expires=1517720588&Signature=srkogJ7Gc2qRHHCzjWKoINx2iJM%3D&response-content-
disposition=attachment
%3B%20filename%3DTHE_SINTASHTA_BOW_OF_THE_BRONZE_AGE_OF_T.pdf) (PDF). European
Association of Archaeologists. Annual Meeting. Archaeopress. pp. 175–186. ISBN 978-1-4073-0822-7.
Retrieved 4 February 2018.
12. Anthony 2007, pp. 408–411.
13. Kuz'mina 2007, p. 222.
14. Anthony 2007.
15. Beckwith 2009.
16. Anthony 2007, p. 391.
17. Anthony 2007, pp. 435–418.

Sources
Allentoft; et al. (2015), "Population genomics of Bronze Age Eurasia", Nature, doi:10.1038/nature14507
(https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fnature14507)
Anthony, D. W. (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
ISBN 978-0-691-05887-0.
Anthony, D. W. (2009). "The Sintashta Genesis: The Roles of Climate Change, Warfare, and Long-Distance
Trade". In Hanks, B.; Linduff, K. (eds.). Social Complexity in Prehistoric Eurasia: Monuments, Metals, and
Mobility. Cambridge University Press. pp. 47–73. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511605376.005 (https://doi.org
/10.1017%2FCBO9780511605376.005). ISBN 978-0-511-60537-6.
Beckwith, Christopher I. (2009), Empires of the Silk Road, Princeton University Press
Hanks, B.; Linduff, K. (2009). "Late Prehistoric Mining, Metallurgy, and Social Organization in North Central
Eurasia". In Hanks, B.; Linduff, K. (eds.). Social Complexity in Prehistoric Eurasia: Monuments, Metals, and
Mobility. Cambridge University Press. pp. 146–167. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511605376.005 (https://doi.org
/10.1017%2FCBO9780511605376.005). ISBN 978-0-511-60537-6.
Koryakova, L. (1998a). "Sintashta-Arkaim Culture" (http://www.csen.org/koryakova2/Korya.Sin.Ark.html). The
Center for the Study of the Eurasian Nomads (CSEN). Retrieved 16 September 2010.
Koryakova, L. (1998b). "An Overview of the Andronovo Culture: Late Bronze Age Indo-Iranians in Central
Asia" (http://www.csen.org/Koryakova/korya.andronovo.html). The Center for the Study of the Eurasian
Nomads (CSEN). Retrieved 16 September 2010.
Kuznetsov, P. F. (2006). "The emergence of Bronze Age chariots in eastern Europe" (https://archive.is
/20120707005717/http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/080/ant0800638.htm). Antiquity. 80 (309): 638–645. Archived
from the original (http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/080/ant0800638.htm) on 2012-07-07.
Kuz'mina, E. E. (2007). Mallory, J. P. (ed.). The Origin of the Indo-Iranians. Leiden: Brill.
ISBN 978-90-04-16054-5.

External links
Stanislav A. Grigoriev, "Ancient Indo-Europeans" (https://www.academia.edu/3742220/Ancient_Indo-
Europeans._Chelyabinsk_Rifei_2002_496_pp) ISBN 5-88521-151-5

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