The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Late Bronze Age cultures that flourished 2000–1150 BC,Brown, Dorcas, and David Anthony, (2017). "Bronze Age Economy and Rituals at Krasnosamarskoe in the Russian Steppes", in: The Digital Archaeological Record: "...Particular attention focuses on the role of agriculture during the unusual episode of sedentary, settled pastoralism that spread across the Eurasian steppes with the Srubnaya and Andronovo cultures (1900-1200 BC)..."Grigoriev, Stanislav, (2021). "Andronovo Problem: Studies of Cultural Genesis in the Eurasian Bronze Age", in Open Archaeology 2021 (7), p.3: "...By Andronovo cultures we may understand only Fyodorovka and Alakul cultures..."Parpola, Asko, (2020). "Royal 'Chariot' Burials of Sanauli near Delhi and Archaeological Correlates of Prehistoric Indo-Iranian Languages", in Studia Orientalia Electronica, Vol. 8, No. 1, 23 October 2020, p.188: "...the Alakul' culture (c.2000–1700 BCE) in the west and the Fëdorovo culture (c.1850–1450 BCE) in the east..." spanning from the southern Urals to the upper Yenisei River in central Siberia and western Xinjiang in the east. In the south, the Andronovo sites reached Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.Grigoriev, Stanislav, (2021). "Andronovo Problem: Studies of Cultural Genesis in the Eurasian Bronze Age", in Open Archaeology 2021 (7), p. 1. "It is assumed that the Indo–Iranian language family, which appeared around 2200 bc, was related to the cultural complex of Andronovo in eastern Central Asia." It is agreed among scholars that the Andronovo culture was Indo-Iranian.: "Archaeologists are now generally agreed that the Andronovo culture of the Central Steppe region in the second millennium BC is to be equated with the Indo-Iranians." Some researchers have preferred to term it an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon.
Andronovo culture's first stage may have started as early as the waning years of the 3rd millennium BC, with a focus on cattle grazing in the vast grasslands of the region.Bendezu-Sarmiento, Julio, 2021. "The first nomads in Central Asia's steppes (Kazakhstan): An overview of major socio-economic changes, derived from funerary practices of the Andronovo and Saka populations of the Bronze and Iron Ages (2nd-1st millennium BCE)", in: Nomad lives: From Prehistoric Times to the Present Day, Publications scientifiques du Muséum, Paris, pp. 479–503.Bendezu-Sarmiento, Julio, 2021. "The first nomads in Central Asia's steppes (Kazakhstan)", Summary (in French): "...Durant la première étape de la culture d'Andronovo (Bronze ancien à la fin du IIIe millénaire avant n.è.), le cheptel (principalement constitué de bovins) était réduit et le fourrage naturel n'était nullement difficile à trouver dans les pâturages proches des habitations..."Bendezu-Sarmiento, Julio, (2022). "The first nomads in Central Asia's steppes (Kazakhstan): Territory, power and religion", in: Eurasian steppe civilization: Human and the Historical and Cultural Environment, Almaty–Turkistan, p. 48: "During the first stage of the Andronovo culture (Early Bronze Age to the end of the 3rd millennium BC), the livestock (mainly cattle) was small and natural fodder was not difficult to find in the pastures near the settlements." The slightly older Sintashta culture ( 2200–1900 BC), formerly included within the Andronovo culture, is now thought to be distinct from Early Andronovo cultures..Hoshko, Tatiana, (2019). "Oriental Technologies in the Production of Cauldrons of Late bronze Age", in _Historiography, Source Studies and Special Historical Disciplines_,SKHID No. 2 (160) March–April 2019, p. 87. Allentoft et al. (2015) concluded from their genetic studies that the Andronovo culture and the preceding Sintashta culture were derived from an eastern migration of the Corded Ware culture, given the higher proportion of ancestry matching the earlier farmers of Europe, similar to the admixture found in the genomes of the Corded Ware population.
Discovery The name derives from the village of Andronovo in the Uzhursky District of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Siberia, where the Russian zoologist Arkadi Tugarinov discovered its first remains in 1914. Several graves were discovered, with skeletons in crouched positions, buried with richly decorated pottery. The Andronovo culture was first identified by the Russian archaeologist Sergei Teploukhov in the 1920s.Great Soviet Encyclopaedia, Article "Andronovo".
Dating and subcultures
The culture of Sarazm (4th–3rd millennium BC) precedes the arrival of the Andronovo steppe culture in South Central Asia in the 2nd millennium BC.
Currently only two sub-cultures are considered as part of Andronovo culture:
Alakul (1900–1500 BC)Irannejad, A. Mani, (23 Jul 2024). "The Indo Iranian Approach to Greater Iran", in: Iran, Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, p. 12, Table 2. In the Forest steppe and steppe of the Trans-Urals; northern, western, and central Kazakhstan; western Siberia; reaching southern Central Asia.Irannejad, A. Mani, (23 Jul 2024). "The Indo Iranian Approach to Greater Iran", in: Iran, Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, p. 11. In Transoxiana region, and Kyzylkum Desert. Fëdorovo or Fyodorovka (1900–1300 BC)Grigoriev, Stanislav, (2021). "Andronovo Problem: Studies of Cultural Genesis in the Eurasian Bronze Age" , in Open Archaeology 2021 (7), p.28: ".... The Fyodorovka dates in the north of the forest-steppe Tobol region are close to the dates in the Southern Transurals and lie in the interval of the 20th–16th centuries BC...Fyodorovka culture, in general, is synchronous with Alakul..." At Forest steppe in Trans-Urals and Ingala Valley; Southern Siberia and Upper Yenissei; northern, central, and eastern Kazakhstan; Semirech'ye region; the Pamir and Tian Shan Mountains; and Xinjiang. In southern Siberia (earliest evidence of cremation and fire cult) Alakul-Fëdorovo (1750–1550 BC). On the other hand, synchronous Alakul-Fedorovo sites mainly appeared in the second quarter of the second millennium BC, in Southern Urals, along with the persistence of the Alakul materials.
Other authors identify the following sub-culture also as part of Andronovo:
Alekseyevka-Sargary (1500–1000 BC)Yarigin, Sergey, et al. (2024). "Megalithic structure from Burabay: Gold mining and cult communities of the Late Bronze Age of Northern Kazakhstan", in: Archaeological Research in Asia, Volume 39, September 2024, 100536.Degtyareva, A.D., et al., (2019). Metal Products of the Alekseyevka-Sargary Culture From the Middle and Upper Tobol Areas", in: Вестник археологии, антропологии и этнографии. 2019. № 4 (47): "The article describes morphological and typological characteristics of non-ferrous metal, determines the formulae of alloys, as well as identifies techniques used for the production of tools by the Alekseyevka-Sargary culture from the South Trans-Urals (15th/14th and 12th/11th BC)..."Mallory, J.P., (1997). "Andronovo Culture", in J.P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams (eds.), Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data, London and Chicago, p. 20: "...Alekseyevka culture...(1200–1000 BC)..." Late Bronze Age in northern Kazakhstan, contacts with Namazga VI in Turkmenia, Ingala Valley in the south of Tyumen Oblast, in Tobol.
Some authors have challenged the chronology and model of eastward spread due to increasing evidence for the earlier presence of these cultural features in parts of east Central Asia.Jia, Peter W., Alison Betts, Dexin Cong, Xiaobing Jia, & Paula Doumani Dupuy, (2017). "Adunqiaolu: new evidence for the Andronovo in Xinjiang, China", in _Antiquity 91 (357)_, pp. 621-639.
Geographic extent
The geographical extent of the culture is vast and difficult to delineate exactly. On its western fringes, it overlaps with the approximately contemporaneous, but distinct, Srubna culture in the Volga-Ural interfluvial. To the east, it reaches into the Minusinsk depression, with some sites as far west as the southern Ural Mountains, overlapping with the area of the earlier Afanasevo culture. Additional sites are scattered as far south as the Kopet Dag (Turkmenistan), the Pamir (Tajikistan) and the Tian Shan (Kyrgyzstan). The northern boundary vaguely corresponds to the beginning of the Taiga. More recently, evidence for the presence of the culture in Xinjiang in far-western China has also been found, mainly concentrated in the area comprising Tashkurgan, Ili, Bortala, and Tacheng area. In the Volga basin, interaction with the Srubna culture was the most intense and prolonged, and Federovo style pottery is found as far west as Volgograd. Mallory notes that the Tazabagyab culture south of Andronovo could be an offshoot of the former (or Srubna), alternatively the result of an amalgamation of steppe cultures and the Central Asian oasis cultures (Bishkent culture and Vakhsh culture). Andronovo influence is thought to have reached as far as the Shang dynasty in China, including the introduction of chariots likely via the Karasuk variant of Andronovo and possibly other intermediary cultures.: "It is reasonable to presume that Andronovo influence extended as far as China. In the Anyang culture we find the momentous achievements of a world civilization - metallurgy, wheeled transport and horse-breeding-already in their developed form; the Yellow river displays no preceding development […] the formation of Chinese civilization was stimulated by a western impulse. In the Eurasian steppes metallurgy, wheeled transport and horse-breeding go back to the 4th millennium BC, while the types of celts, spears and single-edged knives of Anyang find their prototypes and analogies in the Andronovo and Seima-Turbino complexes."
In the initial Sintashta-Petrovka phase, the Andronovo culture is limited to the northern and western steppes in the southern Urals-Kazakhstan. Since then, at the 2nd millennium, in the Alakul Phase (2000–1700 BC), the Fedorovo Phase (1850–1450 BC) and the final Alekseyevka Phase (1400–1000 BC), the Andronovo cultures move intensively eastwards, expanding as far east as the Upper Yenisei River, succeeding the non-Indo-European Okunev culture.
In southern Siberia and Kazakhstan, the Andronovo culture was succeeded by the Karasuk culture (1500–800 BC). On its western border, it is roughly contemporaneous with the Srubna culture, which partly derives from the Abashevo culture. The earliest historical peoples associated with the area are the Cimmerians and Saka/Scythians, appearing in Assyrian records after the decline of the Alekseyevka culture, migrating into Ukraine from ca. the 9th century BC (see also Ukrainian stone stela), and across the Caucasus into Anatolia and Assyria in the late 8th century BC, and possibly also west into Europe as the Thracians (see Thraco-Cimmerian), and the Sigynnae, located by Herodotus beyond the Danube, north of the Thracians, and by Strabo near the Caspian Sea. Both Herodotus and Strabo identify them as Iranian.
Characteristics
The Andronovo culture comprised both highly mobile communities and settled villages, with a notable concentration of settlements in its Central Asian regions. Fortifications include ditches, earthen banks as well as timber palisades, of which an estimated twenty have been discovered. Andronovo villages typically contain around two to twenty houses, but settlements containing as many as a hundred houses have been discovered. Andronovo houses were generally constructed from pine, cedar, or birch, and were usually aligned overlooking the banks of rivers. Larger homes range in the size from 80 to 300 m2, and probably belonged to extended families, a typical feature among early Indo-Iranians. Soma may have originated in the Andronovo culture.George Erdosy (2012), The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity, Walter de Gruyter, p. 371.
Livestock, horse, and agriculture