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The Ethnogenesis of the Indo-Iranians and the Ethnic Attribution of the Andronovo Culture

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The Ethnogenesis of the Indo-Iranians and the Ethnic Attribution of the Andronovo Culture CHAPTER TEN THE ETHNOGENESIS OF THE INDO-IRANIANS AND THE ETHNIC ATTRIBUTION OF THE ANDRONOVO CULTURE The retrospective approach Our analysis of material culture carried out according to the methods discussed earlier shows that in the 2nd millennium BC there were two large zones, Central Eurasian and Indo-Near Eastern, both developing independently from the Neolithic-Eneolithic period. According to its economic and cultural type the Andronovo culture belonged to the Central Eurasian zone as it culturally paralleled the pastoral cultures of the steppes of southern Russia, especially synchronous cultures such as the Timber-grave culture, which were evolving in a parallel way. The differences between these cultures are limited to some details of house construction, ceramics and burial rite which, as we suggest, are the very features that determine their ethnic affiliation and that justify their separation into two independent cultural units. The third related yet independent culture is the Tazabagyab, which differs from the Timber-grave and Andronovo in the large role of irrigation agriculture in the economy, house type and ceramics. Comparing the categories of Andronovo material culture with those of the following Indo-Iranian Sauromatians and Saka, we discern a genetic succession determined not by isolated categories of artifacts but a systematically and transparently interrelated all-encompassing typological complex. It is important to stress that no definite interactions with the south—from the zone of ancient agriculture—mitigated the transition to the Early Iron Age in the steppes. All elements of Saka material culture that were ideally adapted to the ecological conditions of the steppe had been slowly maturing during the previous millennium and the transition to nomadic pastoralism arose out of the Final Bronze Age when livestock, transport, tools, clothes and type of housing were established to form the preconditions for passing to the new type of pastoralnomadism. The military traditions of the nomads were an important part of their culture, emphasized by Persian as well as Greek authors, and these had their roots in the Bronze Age: the equestrian tradition succeeded the chariot combat tactics in the late 2nd millennium BC when new types of cheek-pieces appear to be developed in the Iron Age; the main types of early-Scythian arrows derive from the Andronovo-Alakul’ (Kuz’mina 1985b) as well as different types of Saka spears, axes, adzes, knives, and sickles, which all form continuous typological series (Kuz’mina 1966; 1985b). Succession is determined not only through the elements of material culture, defined as belonging to an economic-cultural type, but also through those func- tionally non-defined but ethnically significant traditions: technologies and the ornamentation of ceramics. Despite the transition to mass nomadism the traditions of post-frame house architecture survived in the ‘house of the dead’, 164 CHAPTER TEN the sub-kurgan chamber that was ritualized and, hence, an important ethnic indicator. Details of costume, particularly headdress, that served as tribal indicators even in ethnonyms (pointed-hat Saka) also go back to the Andronovo. K. F. Smirnov (1957b; 1964), K. A. Akishev (1973); Akishev and Kushaev (1963), B. A. Litvinsky (1972) and M. K. Kadyrbaev (1966: 408-409) estab- lished the succession of the burial rite, particularly the construction of kurgans, stone enclosures, different types of graves, and the prevailing westward orientation. This provides an objective foundation for establishing a genetic connection between the Sauromatian and Saka cultures in the 7th–6th centuries BC and the Andronovo culture so that an Iranian or Indo-Iranian attribution of the latter is well substantiated by the retrospective method. The evidence of material culture Following the method suggested in Chapter 1 we compared the material culture of the ancestral Indo-Iranians as reconstructed from the evidence of language and written testimony with the economic and cultural types of the Old World (2nd millennium BC); we specifically compared the Central Eurasian zone (including the pastoral cultures of the Eurasian steppes) and the Indo-Near Eastern zone (including agricultural and stock-breeding cultures). Already in the 19th century the analysis of the vocabulary of the Indo-Iranian languages, primarily the vocabulary of the oldest written sources that preserve Indo-Iranian tradition, the Avesta and the Vedas (primarily the Rigveda), estab- lished that the Indo-Iranians lived in the vast steppe with large deep rivers and they had a mixed economy with stock-breeding predominant (Geiger 1882; Ol- denberg 1894; Schrader 1901; Pedersen 1931; Marquart 1938, D’yakonov 1956; Ivanov and Toporov 1960; D’yakonov M. 1961; HTP 1963; Bongard-Levin and Il’in 1969; Grantovsky 1970; 1980; 1988; Abaev 1972; Gafurov 1973; Eliza- renkova 1972; Boyce 1975; Burrow 1976). This is demonstrated by the fact that though the Indo-Iranian languages have general Indo-European names for cereals and the plow, they have a poorer agricultural vocabulary than other Indo- European languages. And, in contrast, cattle- and horse-breeding terms are numerous. Indo-Iranian gods have epithets such as ‘master of vast pastures’, ‘granting the richness of cattle’, and ‘splendid richness of horses’. The gods are constantly asked to grant rich livestock, especially horses, to protect cattle, to water the pastures and thus it leaves no doubt that cattle-breeding dominated the economy of the Indo-Iranians. Livestock and the relative value of the animals are defined by numerous descriptions of sacrifices: the highest sacrificial animal was the horse followed by cattle and sheep. The Sanskrit word ‘war’ literally means strive to capture cattle (Schrader 1901; 1913). V. A. Livshits noted that in the Persian language the sacrificed sheep is designated by the word gospand which derives from Iranian ‘holy’ + ‘cow’, hence, cattle did prevail in the herd of the ancient Indo- Iranians. Unlike other Indo-Europeans the Indo-Iranians did not raise pig, but they bred Bactrian camels (Kuz’mina 1963a; Bulliet 1975). Indo-Iranian pottery was made by hand for domestic use without the potter’s wheel (Sinha 1969; Rau 1972) (Table 9). W. Rau showed that the earliest Indo- Iranians did not know a professional craft with narrow specialization; they relied on domestic production. They knew metallurgy and metal processing (Rau 1973; .
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