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The Andronovo culture, is a name given by archaeologists to a group of Bronze Age communities who lived in western Siberia, Russia and parts of Kazakhstan during the second and first millennium BC. The culture is named after the village of Andronovo in the Yenisei river valley, southern Siberia.
They mined deposits of copper ore in the Altai Mountains and lived in villages of as many as ten sunken log cabin houses measuring up to 30m by 60m in size. Burials were made in stone cists or stone enclosures with buried timber chambers.
Three sub cultures are distinguished: Sintashta-Petrovka (2000 -1600 B.C.), Alakul' and Fyedorovo (1500-1300.B.C.), and Sargary-Alexeevka (1200-1000 B.C.). In southern Siberia and Kazakhstan, the Andronovo culture was succeeded by the Karasuk culture.
The Andronovo culture has been associated with early Indo-Iranian culture. In particular, it is credited with the invention of the spoke-wheeled chariot around 2000 BC; Di Cosmo (p. 903) referring to finds related to the Andronovo culture from "as early as 2026 B.C."
References
- "The Northern Frontier in Pre-Imperial China", Cambridge History of Ancient China (pp. 885-966) ch. 13, Nicolo Di Cosmo.