Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

landscapes with people
Srubnaya
Andronovo
BMAC
Dnieper
N
Volga
Ural
M o u n t a i n s
U r a l
Irtysh
Ob’
Yenisei
Sayan Mts
A l t a i M t
s .
Black Sea
C a u c a s u s
Aral
Sea
Syr Darya
T i e n S h a n
Lake Balkhash
Caspian Sea
Amu Darya
Zagros Mountains
0 500 miles
0 500km
3.6 In the Late Bronze Age the nomadic peoples of the steppe can be divided into two broad cultural
complexes, the Srubnaya in the Pontic–Caspian steppe and the Andronovo in Central Asia. The BMAC
(Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex) were sedentary communities who served as middlemen
facilitating exchanges between the nomads and the developed states to the south.
But while cereals are found on some Srubnaya sites, especially in the more westerly
part of the region, work in the Samara valley has shown that this was not invariably
the case. The settlement site of Krasnosamarskoe, where occupation deposits were
thoroughly analysed, showed that there was no trace of cultivated grain. Pits did,
however, produce abundant remains of Chenopodium and Amaranthus,wild plants that
yield high volumes of nutritious seeds. Gathering these from wild stands would have
provided a welcome supplement to a diet of meat, milk, and blood. A study of human
3.7a/b (Opposite) In the microcosm of the Samara Oblast, on the Volga river, where intense fieldwork has
been carried out, a dense pattern of Srubnaya settlements has been identified concentrated along the river
valleys.
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