Khvalynsk culture
Encyclopedia
The Khvalynsk culture was an Eneolithic (copper age) culture of the first half of the 5th millennium BC, discovered at Khvalynsk
Khvalynsk
Khvalynsk is a river port town in Saratov Oblast, Russia, located by the Volga River. Population: 16,000 .It was founded in 1556 as a Russian outpost on the Sosnovy Island on the Volga. In 1606, the whole settlement was relocated to the spot of today's Khvalynsk and came to be known as Sosnovy...

 on the Volga in Saratov Oblast
Saratov Oblast
Saratov Oblast is a federal subject of Russia , located in the Volga Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Saratov. Population: -Demographics:Population:...

, Russia. The culture also is termed the Middle Eneolithic or Developed Eneolithic or Proto-kurgan. It was preceded by the Early Eneolithic or Samara culture
Samara culture
The Samara culture was an eneolithic culture of the early 5th millennium BC at the Samara bend region of the middle Volga, discovered during archaeological excavations in 1973 near the village of Syezzheye in Russia...

, from which it came, and succeeded by the Late Eneolithic, or Early Yamna culture, to which it descended.

Extent and Duration

The Khvalynsk culture extended from Saratov in the north to the North Caucasus in the south, from the Sea of Azov
Sea of Azov
The Sea of Azov , known in Classical Antiquity as Lake Maeotis, is a sea on the south of Eastern Europe. It is linked by the narrow Strait of Kerch to the Black Sea to the south and is bounded on the north by Ukraine mainland, on the east by Russia, and on the west by the Ukraine's Crimean...

 in the west to the Ural River
Ural River
The Ural or Jayıq/Zhayyq , known as Yaik before 1775, is a river flowing through Russia and Kazakhstan. It arises in the southern Ural Mountains and ends at the Caspian Sea. Its total length is 1,511 mi making it the third longest river in Europe after the Volga and the Danube...

 in the east.

A good sprinkling of calibrated C-14 readings obtained from material in the graves of the type site date the culture certainly to the approximate window, 5000-4500 BC. This material is from Khvalynsk I, or Early Khvalynsk. Khvalynsk II, or Late Khvalynsk, is Late Eneolithic.

Some regard Khvalynsk I as Early Eneolithic, contemporary with the Samara culture
Samara culture
The Samara culture was an eneolithic culture of the early 5th millennium BC at the Samara bend region of the middle Volga, discovered during archaeological excavations in 1973 near the village of Syezzheye in Russia...

. Gimbutas
Marija Gimbutas
Marija Gimbutas , was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe", a term she introduced. Her works published between 1946 and 1971 introduced new views by combining traditional spadework with linguistics and mythological...

, 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.

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
Grave goods
Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body.They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods are a type of votive deposit...

 and the remains placed on ochre, face up, knees contracted. A 67 m high earthen kurgan at Nalchik
Nalchik
Nalchik is the capital city of the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, Russia, situated at an altitude of in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains; about northwest of Beslan in the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania. It covers an area of...

, approximately thirty metres in diameter, contained 121 individual graves of remains placed face up, knees contracted, on ochre with a covering of stone.

Artifacts

Khvalinsk evidences the further development of the kurgan. It began in the Samara with individual graves or small groups sometimes under stone. In the Khvalinsk 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 DNA testing, 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 Caucasus
Caucasus
The Caucasus, also Caucas or Caucasia , is a geopolitical region at the border of Europe and Asia, and situated between the Black and the Caspian sea...

 and in the southern Urals. The Khvalynsk graves included metal rings and spiral metal rings. However, there is no indication of any use beyond ornamental. The quality of stone weapons and implements reaches a high point. The Krivoluchie grave, which Gimbutas viewed as that of a chief, contained a long flint dagger and tanged arrowheads, all carefully retouched on both faces. In addition is a porphyry axe-head with lug
Lug (knob)
A Lug is a typically flattened protuberance, a knob, or extrusion on the side of a vessel: pottery, jug, glass, vase, etc. They are sometimes found on prehistoric ceramics/stone-vessels such as pots from Ancient Egypt, Hembury ware, claw beakers, and boar spears.A lug may also only be shaped as a...

s and a haft hole. These artifacts are of types that not too long after appeared in metal.

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
Proto-Indo-Europeans
The Proto-Indo-Europeans were the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language , a reconstructed prehistoric language of Eurasia.Knowledge of them comes chiefly from the linguistic reconstruction, along with material evidence from archaeology and archaeogenetics...

 are boar, bear, wolf , deer and others. 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. 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.

Sources

  • J. P. Mallory, "Khvalynsk Culture", Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture
    Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture
    The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture is an encyclopedia of Indo-European studies and the Proto-Indo-Europeans. The encyclopedia was edited by J. P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams and published in 1997 by Fitzroy Dearborn...

    , Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997.
  • Marija Gimbutas
    Marija Gimbutas
    Marija Gimbutas , was a Lithuanian-American archeologist known for her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of "Old Europe", a term she introduced. Her works published between 1946 and 1971 introduced new views by combining traditional spadework with linguistics and mythological...

    , "The Civilization of the Goddess", HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, ISBN 0-06-250368-5 or ISBN 0-06-250337-5

External links

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