Andronovo culture

A map of the Andronovo culture

The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Late Bronze Age cultures that flourished c.2000–1450 BC, in western Siberia and the central Eurasian Steppe. Some researchers have preferred to term it an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon. The older Sintashta culture (2200–1800 BC), formerly included within the Andronovo culture, is now considered separately to Early Andronovo cultures.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
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B

• The most serious, obvious, and oft-cited objection against the northern Andronovo course is that the steppe culture does not intrude into the South Asian borderlands (not to speak of the heartland). Why, then, should one accept it as representing Indo-Aryan speakers intruding into South Asia (although these steppe people may certainly have been speakers of Indo-Iranian dialects)? Such a position can only be predicated on an acceptance of the linguistic assumptions outlined in the previous chapters and not on the archaeological data per se.
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

• A later Iranian affiliation of the Andronovo culture is sometimes suggested, although, even here, Bosch-Gimpera (1973) objects that "there is nothing in Iran in the second millennium that is related to Andronovo, something which one would expect if the cradle of the Indo-Iranians were to be found in this territory" (515).
  • Bosch-Gimpera, quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

F

• Consequently, in current migratory hypotheses, in the same way that the Oxus Civilization disappears upon contact with India, the culture of the Andronovo steppes vanishes upon contact with the Oxus Civilization and never crosses towards the south the line which extends from Kopet Dagh to Pamir-Karakorum, which poses serious problems for historically translating the Indo-Aryans towards the South.
  • p 268 Henri-Paul Francfort. La civilisation de l'Oxus et les Indo-Iraniens et Indo-Aryens en Asie centrale. 2005, in: G. Fussman, J. Kellens, H.-P. Francfort, X. Tremblay, Aryas, Ariens et Iraniens en Asie centrale

• The dates (2200–1500 BCE) and location of the Andronovo culture are consistent with the attribution of this culture to the undivided Indo-Iranians. But we will notice that the traces attested today stop in Bactria... No Andronovian burial has yet been found south of the Oxus.... They are very thin: a few shards. It should therefore be assumed that the Indo-Iranians, Proto-Iranians or Proto-Indo-Aryans got rid of this culture just as they entered Iran and India. The hypothesis is possible since, to arrive in these territories, they had necessarily crossed sedentary zones belonging to the Oxus civilization, whose material culture was much superior. The curious thing is that they seem not to have borrowed anything from the latter either. Furthermore, one of the markers of the Scythian civilization and – for the majority of archaeologists – of the p-i-e and i-ir habitat in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC is the existence of tombs covered with a tumulus (known as kurgan/ kurgan)... So in Sintashta. However, this type of burial was considered an abomination both in Vedic India and in Mazdaean Iran. Clearly, it is very difficult to find a marker for the i-ir group.
  • p. 802-3 Fussman G. Entre fantasmes, science et politique. L’entrée des Āryas en Inde. Annales Histoire, Sciences Sociales. 2003;58(4):779-813.

• Francfort (1989) stresses this point: "Nothing allows us to dismiss the possibility that the Andronovians of Tazabagjab are the Indo-Iranians as much as the fact that they vanish on the fringes of sedentary Central Asia and do not appear as the ephemeral invaders of India at the feet of the Hindu Kush" (453).
  • Francfort, quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

H

• Such Archaeologists of the region are quite specific that "the notion of nomads from the north as the original Iranians is unsupported by the detailed archaeological sequence available" (Hiebert 1998, 153).
  • Hiebert, quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

K

• Where Kuzmina finds Andronovo archaeological prototypes for the inferred Indo-Aryan cultural equipment known by the Mitanni Syria in the Near East and the Vedic speakers in India, Klejn points out that no actual trace of this Andronovo culture in the archaeology of either of these-Indo-Aryan cultures in the Near East or India has come to light. Klejn's critique of this Andronovo hypothesis raises important objections. While acknowledging the Iranian identification of the Andronovo culture, he finds it much too late for an Indo-Aryan identification, since the Andronovo culture "took shape in the 16th or 17th century B.c, whereas the Aryans already appeared in the Near East not later than the 1 5th to 16th century B.C." More important, "these [latter] regions contain nothing reminiscent of Timber-Frame Andronovo materials" (Klejn 1974, 58). This is an essential point, especially since, as we have seen, some scholars date the Indo-Aryan presence in the Near East to the 18th or 17th century B.C.E. How, then, could the Indo- Aryans have been represented in a completely different material culture in the steppes at more or less the same time? An Indo-Iranian affiliation of the graves is even more unrealistic, since the joint Indo-Iranian period would have been much earlier than the dates for the Andronovo period. Brenties (1981), we can recall, pointed out the same objections with the Andronovo theory.
  • Klejn, quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

• In contrast, she holds that on many essential points Andronovo pottery techniques are absolutely similar to those practiced by the Vedic Aryans (as reconstructed by Rau): "Ceramic finds trace the gradual infiltration of the farming oases of Marghiana and Bactria by the late-Andronovo tribes and their emergence on the mountain passes leading into the Indian subcontinent, which may provide the clue to the problem of the origin of the Aryans" (24-27). Kuzmina is forced to concede, however, that "in the Andronovo culture it was mainly the womenfolk who engaged in the making of pottery. ... in the case of the Vedic Aryans it was the male paterfamilias." Moreover, "The second major distinction is the richness of the impressed decoration of the Andronovo pottery, whose geometrical designs include triangle, meander, swastika, lozenge and herringbone" (26). Vedic pottery is supposed to be plain. Neither southern nor northern routes, then, have fully fulfilled Rau's Vedic pottery criteria.
  • Elena Efimovna Kuzmina , in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

• The variety of Andronovo funeral rites finds a complete and thorough correlation in early indic texts ». (p.195)... These “hearths comprise a shallow round or oval pit… often covered with flat stone slabs on the bottom…. This hearth is described in ancient Indian texts as the domestic fire gārhapatya-, ‘fire of the master of the house’… Such hearths were used for ritual purposes: a bride would go around it, a widow would perform a ritual dance, people jumped over it during a feast.” (p.45)... [Another type of hearth] “has a rectangular form… and was made of closely adjusted rectangular stone slabs inserted into the ground on their narrow ends. Such hearths were found in the centre of a house, kept clean, and it is likely that they had a ritual function… This type of hearth corresponded to the early Indian special cult hearth āhavanīya…” (p.45)
  • Elena Kuzmina, Origin of the Indo-Iranians (Brill, Leiden). quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins.

• Part of the Andronovo toponyms can only be interpreted as Indo-Aryan”. Moreover, ”the Indo-Iranian toponyms of the pre-Scythian period have been found on the territory populated by the Fedorovo tribes.
  • Elena Kuzmina, Origin of the Indo-Iranians (Brill, Leiden). quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins.

• Material culture including “a cult of the horse” moves from the eastern slopes of the Urals to Central Asia, but: “There is no evidence that they reached India.” (p.452)
  • Elena Kuzmina, Origin of the Indo-Iranians (Brill, Leiden). quoted in Elst, Koenraad (2018). Still no trace of an Aryan invasion: A collection on Indo-European origins.

• According to Kuzmina, the fact that the essential equipment of the Indo-Aryan charioteers in the Mitanni kingdom and in India has no prototypes or analogies in either the Near East or Harappan India, but rather does show affinity with the items in the Sintashta- Petrovka burials mentioned earlier, "corroborates the hypothesis that locates the Indo- Iranian homeland on the Eurasian steppes between the Don and Kazakhstan in the 16th— 17th centuries BC." She adds, appropriately, that "to dispel all doubts we have only to find warrior burials similar to those of the steppes in Mitanni and in the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent" (Kuzmina 1994, 410). These have yet to be found.
  • (Kuzmina 1994, 410) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

L

• As for India, as Lyonnet (1993) notes: "To this day no traces of such stock breeders have been detected south of the Hindukush" (82). This is the most serious, and obvious, shortcoming of the Andronovo Indo-Aryan or Iranian identification.
  • Lyonnet, quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

• Although there is a consensus among archaeologists working on the steppes that the Andronovo culture is in the right place at the right time, and thus is to be considered Indo-Iranian, there is neither textual, ethnohistoric, nor archaeological evidence, individually or in combination, that offers a clinching argument for this consensus. Kuzmina’s carefully constructed methodology simply cannot be applied to the Andronovo culture. The Andronovo culture is well over a thousand years distant from any textual tradition, making any linguistic and/or ethnohistoric attribution extremely tenuous. Furthermore, ethnicity is permeable and multidimensional. It is difficult to accept the notion that for over a millennium the Andronovo culture remained an unchanging entity. Finally, the categories of “ethnic indicators” utilized by Kuzmina: horsebreeding, horse rituals, shared ceramic types, avoidance of pig, shared burial patterns, and architectural tem- plates can be used to identify the Arab, the Turk, and the Iranian; three completely distinctive ethnic and linguistic groups. Ethnicity and language are not so easily wedded to an archaeological signature. Material residues as well as the units of analysis in archaeology are too frequently incongruent with what we wish to investigate. The Arab, Turk, and Iranian may share a laundry list of general attributes but they are neither linguistically nor culturally similar entities.
  • ARCHAEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE The case of the Bronze Age Indo-Iranians by Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge.**145

• The hypothesis that the Andronovo culture, or more specifically one of its sub- types, are Indo-Iranians has met with wide acceptance among Russian archaeologists. Arguments focus upon which variant is Indo-Iranian: is it the SAP, or the Alakul, or the Fedorov? If, on the one hand, the SAP culture stems from the indigenous northern Kazakhstan roots (Botai culture), as believed by some, then the Indo-Iranians were present in the region as early as 2900 BC (uncorrected radiocarbon years from Botai). If, on the other hand, the Indo-Iranian culture was introduced from the west, sometime in the first half of the second millennium, as believed by Kuzmina and a majority of Russian scholars, then there is both an absence of evidence for such migrations and an insufficient time period to allow for them to extend over the vast territories that the Indo-Iranians are believed to have occupied.
  • ARCHAEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE The case of the Bronze Age Indo-Iranians by Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge.**154

• The identification of the SAP as Indo-Iranian is buttressed by a number of advo- cates, including Kuzmina (1994) in her highly influential book. Kuzmina offers numerous parallels between the archaeological record and the Rigvedic and Avestan texts. The parallels drawn are, at best, of a most general nature and do not convince...
  • ARCHAEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE The case of the Bronze Age Indo-Iranians by Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge. **155

• There is absolutely NO archaeological evidence for any variant of the Andronovo culture either reaching or influencing the cultures of Iran or northern India in the second millennium. Not a single artifact of identifiable Andronovo type has been recovered from the Iranian Plateau, northern India, or Pakistan.
  • ARCHAEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE The case of the Bronze Age Indo-Iranians by Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge.**155

• General similarities in material culture and vague parallels in social behavior (i.e. mortuary ritual and emphasis upon horses), drawn from the Avesta, Rigveda, and other “ethnohistoric” sources typify the manner by which Kuzmina relates the Andronovo with the Indo-Iranians. Even more tenuous are the suggestions advanced by the Genings and Zdanovich. In the Sintashta volume they correlate specific Andronovo subcultures and identify them with Indo- Iranian tribes. With the recognition of Andronovo subcultures the identification of specific ones as Indo-Iranian has become an industry (Vasilyev et al. 1995). Needless to say there is no consensus on the ethnicity of any single Andronovo subculture. It has yet to be demonstrated that language expansions can be traced through similarities in material culture or that a widely distributed culture, existing for a millennium and consisting of substantial variation, means that a population shares a common or related ethnicity.
  • ARCHAEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE The case of the Bronze Age Indo-Iranians by Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge.**157

• Parallels between the material culture and the environment of the Andronovo are compared to commentaries in the Rigveda and Avesta and are taken to confirm the Indo-Iranian identity of the Andronovo. The parallels are far too general to offer confidence in these correlations.
  • ARCHAEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE The case of the Bronze Age Indo-Iranians by Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge.**157

S

• In Drevnosti Strani Margush he states, “Contrary to the archaeological evidence is the statement that pottery of steppe character was ‘plentiful’ on the sites of south Turkmenistan. Pottery of the Andronovo type do not exceed 100 fragments in all of south Turkmenistan” (p. 63). As rigorous approaches to data retrieval were not practised such a figure must be merely impressionistic.
  • Drevnosti Strani Margush , Sarianidi quoted in ARCHAEOLOGY AND LANGUAGE The case of the Bronze Age Indo-Iranians by Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, in : Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge. 160,

• As far as Sarianidi (1993b) is concerned, the Andronovo tribes "penetrated to a minimum extent. . . not exceeding the limits of normal contacts so natural for tribes with different economical structures, living in the border-lands of steppes and agricultural oases" (17).'
  • Sarianidi, quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10