Many significant events took place in Eurasia at the beginning of the Bronze Age, which is marked by a general population expansion. By the early second millennium BCE metal objects of similar form and function in pure copper and mold-cast arsenical bronzes were produced in a Circum-Pontic metallurgical province extending from the Balkans around the North Black Sea into the southern Urals. The largest copper ore mine was located at Kargaly in the southern Ural steppes. The mid-second millennium BCE saw innovative metallurgical technologies that most probably originated east of the Ural Mountains and became known as the Seima-Turbino phenomena. Production included thin-walled casting of tin bronze, a technology that spread from the Altai Mountains to the Dnieper River. At the turn of the second to first millennium BCE, metallurgy was advanced and concentrated in the Ural Mountains, throughout most of Kazakstan into western Siberia and the Altai Mountains where production was surprisingly uniform. Iron technology was not introduced into the Eurasian steppes until around the middle of the first millennium BCE.
Developing in the early second millennium BC, the Andronovo Culture was a loosely related sedentary population inhabiting the central steppes south to the Kopet Dag, the Pamir and Tien Shan Mountains, and extending north into Minusinsk Basin. Andronovo settlements were situated on the banks of small rivers and in low flood plains. Both small villages, with up to 20 houses, as well as larger ones with up to 100 timber-built houses are known from the earlier period. Settlements grew to accommodate the increasing populations and in the later development phase, houses were roomy, rectangular semi-dugout dwellings ranging from 100 to 135 m2 placed in line along a river. A particular feature of the Andronovo is the great mounds of ashes that accumulated as the settlements grew. The Andronovo Culture economy was based on animal husbandry supplemented by some agriculture, hunting, fishing, and gathering. Around the turn of the second to first millennium BCE, the settlement economy transformed from sedentary to nomadic, characterized by annual cyclical animal herding and a shared portable material culture.
Dating between 2000 and 1600 BCE, the Sintashta-Arkaim Culture has been recently recognized in the central steppes and along the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains. The settlements were round or rectangular fortifications covering between 6000 and 30 000 m2 Village were protected by walls constructed from a wooden frame reinforced with unfired clay brick as well as ramparts and moats. Towers guarded the entrances and access to water. Within the fortification rectangular houses 25-130 m2 that contained pit-storage, open fire hearths, and wells faced an internal circular street but were abutted against the exterior fortification. Some buildings also featured furnaces for forging metals. It is assumed that cities such as Arkaim were administrative-ceremonial centers where up to 1000 aristocracy/metallurgists assembled periodically to perform specific rituals.
Archaeological evidence has revealed that throughout the central steppes, west to the Don River and beginning around 1000 BCE, a severe drought occurred, at which time the affected populations withdrew - probably to the south - from the traditional habitation centers. With the reappearance of a less-hostile climate c. 900-800 BCE, the economic lifestyle dramatically shifted from small village farming complemented by animal husbandry to developed pastoral nomadism in which animals form the basis of survival. This also marks the commencement of the Early Iron Age.
World History
