Barry Cunlife - The Scythians

landscapes with people
3.11 The elaborate burials of the Karasuk culture indicate the emergence of an elite. These graves are from
the cemetery at Anchil Chon in the Minusinsk Valley.
broadly contemporary cultural groups can be defined archaeologically, the Srubnaya
culture occupying the region east of the river Don and the Sabatinovka culture
located largely between the Don and the Danube. A major change in climate becomes
apparent in the eleventh century when the Pontic–Caspian region and the Kazakh
steppe began to experience a far more arid climate manifest in the fall in the level of
the Black Sea and Caspian Sea and a significant shift to the north in the ecological
boundaries of the steppe zone. The overall effect of this change was that the comparatively
settled economy based on cattle breeding and agriculture gave way to a more
nomadic style of cattle breeding; horse riding became increasingly important; and,
over time, the population declined. The communities of the Belozerka culture, which
followed the Sabatinovka culture in the late eleventh century in the region between
the Don and the Danube, abandoned the open steppe for the river valleys and coastal
region. Based on the number of known settlements it has been suggested that there
may have been a tenfold decrease in population.
3.12a/b (Opposite) Settlement on the Pontic steppe. The upper map shows the situation in the fourteenth
to twelfth century bc, when two cultural groups can be distinguished. The lower map shows the situation
in the twelfth to tenth century bc, when the population seems to have considerably diminished, moving
away from the open steppe to concentrate in the river valleys.
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