The synchronization of the Novy Kumak horizon sites is established with the Central European cultures of the Bronze A 1, 2 periods according to Reineke, and the Danube Region cultures of the Monteoru I C4-II A stages on the basis of: (1) bone buckles (Litvinenko 1996; Yu. P. Matveev 1996); (2) warty beads (i. e., beads with small projections), dating from the seventeenth-sixteenth centuries B. c. (Bratchenko 1976), found in the burial grounds of Sintashta, Alabuga, Graf-
Skie Razvaliny, and Tanabergen; (3) spiked cheek-pieces that were spread from Kazakhstan to the Danube and the Mycenaean Shaft Graves in Greece (Leskov 1964; Smirnov, Kuzmina 1977; Kuzmina 1980a; 1998b; Goncharova 1996; Bochkarev 1998; Pryakhin, Besedin 1998); and (4) Mycenaean ornaments (Smirnov, Kuzmina 1977; Vasil’ev et al. 1994; Vasil’ev 1995; Obydennov, Korepanov 1997, fig. 59; Penner 1998) and the Post-Mycenaean decoration of the later articles.
The traditional date of the Central European sites of the Bronze A 1, A 2 period is now put back by two centuries, based upon the thoroughly elaborated dendrochronological scale (Bochkarev 1992; R. ELrause et al. 1989; Kxomer, Becker 1993; Randsborg 1992; Kuniholm 1993). However, the dates obtained by the dendrochronological method disagree with those determined by the radiocarbon method, being some two centuries later than the latter.
The similarity of the cheek-pieces zmd ornaments with the Mycenaean ones is decisive in determining the age of the Novy Kumak horizon sites. Since the cheek-piece types represented in the Steppe are the most archaic, are quite diverse (which reflects the search for the most effective variants), and can be viewed as a prototype of the Mycenaean types, it was assumed that the traditional date of the Mycenaean Shaft Graves—1570-1550 B. c.—was indeed the terminus post quern of the Steppe cheek-pieces and served only as the upper limit of the Novy Kumak horizon (Smirnov, Kuzmina 1977; Kuzmina 1980a; 1994c).
In recent years there has been a tendency to assign the age of the Shaft Graves to an earlier time. The date was shifted back a century by the method of analogies as a result of reinterpreting Mycenae’s relations with the sites of Egypt and Western Asia, dated by the historical method (Kemp, Merrilees 1980; Dietz 1991; Coleman, Walz 1997) and also by the radiocarbon method, on the basis of the date of eruption of the Santorini Island volcano (Betancourt 1987; Warren, Hankey 1989; Manning 1995). If the date of seventeenth century B. C. is accepted, this will allow us, accordingly, to lower the age of the Novy Kumak horizon sites as well. However, even in this case, the new calibrated dates of the Steppe complexes will remain older than those obtained by the method of andogies with Mycenae and Germany.
World History
