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Revision as of 12:02, 20 October 2004 by 130.60.142.62 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)This article is about Bronze Age burial mounds. See Kurgan, Kurgan Oblast for a Russian city of that name.
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Kurgan (кургáн) is the russian word (from turkic) for a type of burial mound or barrow, heaped over a burial chamber, often of wood.
In 1956 Marija Gimbutas introduced her Kurgan hypothesis combining kurgan archaeology with linguistics to locate the origins of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speaking peoples. She tentatively named the culture "Kurgan" after their distinctive burial mounds and traced its diffusion into Europe. This hypothesis has had a significant impact on Indo-European research. Those scholars who follow Gimbutas identify a Kurgan culture as reflecting an early Indo-European ethnicity which existed in the steppes and southeastern Europe from the fifth to third millennia BC.
Several towns in Russia are called Kurgan, as well as one oblast (Курганская область), named after its capital.
Archaeology
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Kurgan type barrows were characteristic of Bronze Age nomadic peoples of the steppes, from the Altai to the Caucasus and Romania. Within the burial chamber at the heart of the kurgan, members of the elite were buried with grave goods and sacrificial offerings, sometimes including horse-sacrifices.
Sometimes, burial mounds are quite complex structures with internal chambers. The bodies of important or wealthy people, together with grave goods were placed in such graves out of respect or for religious reasons.
Kurgan hypothesis
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The "Kurgan hypothesis" of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) origins assumes gradual expansion of the "Kurgan culture" until it encompasses the entire pontic steppe, Kurgan IV being identified with the Yamna culture of around 3000 BC. Subsequent expansion beyond the steppes leads to hybrid cultures, such as the globular amphora culture to the west, the immigration of proto-Greeks to the Balkans and the nomadic Indo-Iranian cultures to the east around 2500 BC. The domestication of the horse, and later the use of early chariots is assumed to have increased the mobility of the Kurgan culture, facilitating the expansion over the entire Yamna region. In the Kurgan hypothesis, the entire pontic steppes are considered the PIE Urheimat, and a variety of late PIE dialects is assumed to have been spoken across the region. The area near the Volga labelled ?Urheimat in the map above marks the location of the earliest known traces of horse-riding, and would correspond to an early PIE or pre-PIE nucleus of the 5th millennium BC.
Stages of Expansion
Gimbutas identifies four successive stages of the Kurgan culture and three successive "waves" of expansion.
- Kurgan I Dnieper/Volga region, earlier half of the 4th millennium BC. Apparently evolving from cultures of the Volga basin, ubgroups include the Sarama and Seroglasovka cultures.
- Kurgan II–III ca. 3500 BC–2900 BC. Includes the Srednij-Stog cultures and the Maykop culture of the northern Caucasus. Stone circles, early two-wheeled chariots, anthropomorphic stone stelae of deities.
- Kurgan IV or Yamna culture, until ca. 2400 BC, encompassing the entire steppe region from the Volga to Romania.
- Wave 1 predating Kurgan I, expansion from the lower Volga to the Dnieper, leading to coexistence of Kurgan I and the Cucuteni culture. Repercussions of the migration extend as far as the Balkans and along the Danube to the Vinca and Lengyel cultures in Hungary.
- Wave 2 mid 4th millennium BC, orginating in the Maykop culture and resulting in advances of "kurganized" hybrid cultures into northern Europe around 3000 BC. In the view of Gimbutas, this would correspond to the first intrusion of Indo-European languages into western and northern Europe.
- Wave 3 3000–2800 BC, expansion of the Yamna culture beyond the steppes, with the appearance of the characteristic pit graves as far as the areas of modern Romania, Bulgaria and eastern Hungary.
Secondary Urheimat
Interpretation
Gimbutas viewed the expansions of the Kurgan culture as a series of essentially hostile, military invasions that swept away the peaceful, matriarchal cultures of Old Europe, replacing it with a patriarchal warrior society, a process visible in the appearance of fortified settlements and hillforts and the graves of warrior-chieftains:
- The Process of Indo-Europeanization was a cultural, not a physical transformation. It must be understood as a military victory in terms of imposing a new administrative system, language and religion upon the indigenous groups.
In her later life, Gimbutas increasingly emphasized the forced transition from the mediterranean cult of the mother goddess to a patriarchal society and the worship of the warlike god of thunder (Zeus, Tyr, Dyaus), to a point of essentially formulating feminist archaeology. Many scholars who accept the general scenario of Indo-European migration proposed, maintain that the transition may have much more peaceful and gradual than suggested by Gimbutas. The migrations were certainly not a sudden concerted military operation but the expansion of disconnected tribes and cultures, spanning many generations, and blending with the indigenous cultures.