Notes

Introduction

1.  Editor’s note: The Introduction is particularly valuable for its review of the literature on “mobile pastoralism” and especially for its account of the role of the Persians, who are often left out of the discussion by Western authors on the lead-up to the establishment of the Silk Road.

2.  Editor’s note: Bibliographical citations to Kuzmina without preceding initials refer to E. E. Kuzmina.

3.  Editor’s note: There were also some local sources of jade avaDable to the inhabitants of the East Asian Heartland (EAH).

Chapter 1. The Dynamics of the Eurasian Steppe Ecology

Note to epigraph: F. Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible (London, 1981-84), p. 62.

Chapter 2. Economic Developments in the Ponto-Caspian Steppe

1.  S. Bfikdnyi’s assumption of a local secondary center of the domestication of cattle and the pig in Southeastern Europe has not been corroborated; although the ancestors of these animals were found in Eastern Europe, in Asia they had been tamed two millennia earlier, and along with the sheep and cereals presumably reached Europe. Only in Southeast Asia is there an assumption that there was an independent center of plant and animal domestication that later spread to China. But this issue remains debatable.

2.  Shnirelman (1989, 177) admits tentatively the influence of the Caucasian center on the spread of sheep breeding.

3.  Editor’s note: Because it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between sheep and goat bones, they are usually called “sheep/goat bones” or “ovicaprid bones.”

4.  A kunga is an infertile cross between an onager (female) and an ass (male). Even the hybrid is very aggressive and impossible to domesticate. Hence, the supposition that many representations of equids in the ancient Near East depict onagers is incorrect.

5.  The human popxilations of these cultures share genetic traits.

6.  According to DNA studies, the wild tarpan appears to be most closely related to these early domesticated horses.

7.  Editor’s note: The author’s discussion of the domestication of the horse may be supplemented by reference to the recent studies of archaeozoologists (or zooarchaeologists) such as Norbert Benecke, Angela von den Driesch, P. A. Kosintsev, Marsha Levine, and Sandra L. Olsen. In addition, the McDonald Institute Monographs on the exploitation of and adaptation to the Eurasian steppe that were published by Cambridge University beginning in 1999 provide a wealth of relevant information.

8.1 express my deep gratitude for their valuable consultations.

9.  Personal communication.

10.  Editor’s note: In Russian agriculture sam is the coefficient of a soil’s yielding capacity; sam-1 means that a volume of grain sown gives the same volume of crop, sam-30 means that a volume sown gives a crop thirty times its volume, sam-200 means that it gives two hundred times the sown volume, and so on.

11.  The interpretation of the clay models as cradles suggested by Izbitser has been disproved by the above-mentioned cult character of the images. The reconstruction of models from the Three Brothers burial mound by A. Hausler (1982) is convincing. Two models of two-wheeled vehicles are in V. A. Safronov’s collection. The widespread opinion that vehicle models were toys is incorrect, because, first, these models could not roll (the draft animal figures that are part of the models are often wheelless); second, the Western Asian models are made of costly metal and extremely fragile; third—and most important—both in the Southern Russian Steppe and in the Danube Region the models were found in burials, and in Western Asia in Tel Agrab, a copper model was found in the closed complex of the temple devoted to Sin, the god of the moon. Some Hittite texts have survived that indicate that models of vehicles were kept in the temple of the god of vegetation (Kiimmel 1967). Besides, it is undoubtedly cult vehicles that are represented on the seals, for they all feature the figure of a god. The meaning of vehicles in religious ceremonies and in the royal cult is well known. All this put together invalidates the interpretation of the two-wheeled vehicle models as children’s toys.

Chapter 3. The Eurasian Steppe in the Bronze Age

1. Editor’s note: MVK is the abbreviation of the Russian mnogovalikovaya, Multi-Roller Ceramic, i. e., “with multiple raised borders.”

2.1  would like to express my deep thanks to N. B. Vinogradov, G. B. Zdanov-ich, T. S. Malyutina, S. S. Kalieva, and other colleagues for their permission to study thoroughly the as yet unpublished materials of their excavations.

3. Editor’s note: For a new set of ’“'C dates pertaining to these sites, see N. L. Moi’gunova and D. S. Khokhlova, “Kurgans and Nomads; New Investigations of Mound Burials in the Southern Urals,” Antiquity 80 (2006), 303-17.

4.1  express my gratitude to V. S. Bochkarev, who drew my attention to this publication and provided me with pictures of the articles.

5. Editor’s note: Current thinking among paleozoologists is that the dromedary was developed out of the domesticated Bactrian and that the wild ancestor of both is the wild Bactrian, so the dromedary in the Near East must have been later than the domesticated Bactrian in Central Asia.

Chapter 4. Archaeological Cultures of Southern Central Asia

1.  At the present time it is impossible to determine more precisely the cultural origin of the sites. The opposite point of view was voiced by A. Askarov (1962a, b), who holds that these materials belong to the Andronovo Culture. S. P. Tolstov and M. A. Itina (1960) ascribe them to the Tazabagyab Culture and assume the movement of a part of the population from IQiorezm.

2.  The cause of the crisis of the Namazga VI Culture is interpreted in different ways; E. Schmidt (Pumpelly 1908) and A. A. Marushchenko (1959) believe that it succumbed to the pressure of the Steppe groups; B. A. Kuftin (1954) points out that this moment coincided with the approach of the xerothermic period; V. M. Masson (1959) assumes that an internal economic crisis took place in Southern Turkmenistan. It seems most likely that the domestic economic crisis weakened the Anau communities and largely cleared the way for the occupation of their territory by the northern peoples.

3.  Editor’s note: For an explanation of this term, see the Editor’s Foreword.

4.  A somewhat different point of view is held by V. M. Masson (1959; 1966).

5.  A different point of view was expressed by B. A. Litvinsky (1963), who includes the sites of the Zeravshan in the Kairakum Culture. A. Askarov and Ya. G. Gulyamov (Gulyamov, Islamov, Askarov 1966) regard these sites, like those of Khorezm, as belonging to the Andronovo Culture.

6.  S. P. Tolstov, who connected the origin of the Tazabagyab Culture with the arrival of the Volga Region’s Timber-Grave population, voiced a different point of view. A. Askarov (1962b), following M. P. Gryaznov, considers the Tazabagyab sites as belonging to Andronovo proper.

7.  A different point of view was advanced by Yu. A. Zadneprovsky (1966), who negated the separate Suyargan Culture and considered the late Suyargan and Tazabagyab sites to be a single entity.

8.  Different points of view were offered by S. P. Tolstov (1962), who held that the Suyargan Culture representatives had come from the south, and by A. A. Formozov (1951), who understood the Kelteminar and Andronovo cultures to be closely related.

9.  Dromos = passageway.

10.  Editor’s note: These groups were probably relatively sedentary, in contrast to the nomadic livestockTierders mentioned later in this sentence.

Chapter 5. Relations Between Eastern and Western Central Asia

Note to epigraph: V. Nabokov, The Gift, trans. Michael Scammell (New York, 1963), p. 136.

1.  In the Pikshik burial ground of the Abashevo Culture of the second millennium B. C. on the Volga, graves were discovered with timber coimter floors and frameworks, surrounded by rectangular and circular concentric fences of 1.5 m-high dug-in pales (Merpert 1961, 143-46, fig. 19). There are timber constructions over the graves in the Andronovo burial grounds of Tursumbai (the author’s excavations) and Yunnan (Savinov, Bobrov 1995).

2.  Horse bones were found in the Afanasievo burial grounds of Afanasievo, Chemovaya VI, Letnik VI, Krasny Yar, Malyie Kopani, Tepsei X, Kuyum, Bike, and Elo.

3.  V. A. Fisenko (1967) has suggested that the Catacomb people were Proto-Hittites.

4.  The clay statuette and bronze pins of Zaman-Baba somewhat resemble the wooden figurine and bone pins of Gumugou (cf: Gulyamov et al. 1966, pi. V, 45; pi. XVI; Debaine-Francfort 1988, figs. 1, 5, 6).

5.  The hypothesis of T. V. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov (1984) for the migration of the Tocharians is not confirmed by either archaeological or anthropological data.

6.  The radiocarbon dates of the twenty-first-nineteenth centuries B. C. (Anthony, Vinogradov 1995) do not agree with the European chronological scale.

7.  Editor’s note: This is sometimes spelled depe in certain place-names. Tepe is a Turkic word meaning “hill, summit” and is used to indicate an artificial mound in place-names. Cf. tell or tel, which is derived from the Semitic root til, signifying an ancient mound composed of the remains of successive setde-ments and often used in place-names of the Middle East.

8.  It is not unlikely that the architecture of the setdement of Lanzhouwanzi goes back to Andronovo building traditions: a two-chamber house of 200 sq. m with walls made of stone blocks, support posts, and a round hearth.

9.  Although the pastoralists of the Eneolithic period, who pastured herds of

Horses, did ride on horseback, they were not warrior-riders, as is shown by the fact that the bridle for restraining the horse and the set of weapons used appeared only at the turn of the second millennium B. C., which determines the time of the emergence of mounted warriors (cf. Kuzmina 1994c; 1996-97; Gimbutas 1977; Telegin 1986; Anthony 1995). i

10.  The oldest fragment of a silk fabric outside China was found in Uzbekistan at the setdement of Sapalli-tepe of the etirly second millennium B. C. (Askarov 1973, 133-34).