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The Andronovo culture, ca. 2000-900 BC, is the name for a group of Bronze Age communities of 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.
This cultural horizon was approximately contemporaneous with but only mildly related to the Srubna culture immediately to the west.
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.
In other regards, the economy was pastoral, based on horses and cattle, but also sheep and goats.
At least four sub-cultures are distinguished:
- Sintashta-Petrovka (2000 -1600 BC)
- Alakul (2100-1400 BC)
- Fedorovo (1400-1200 BC)
- Alekseyevka (1200-1000 BC)
In southern Siberia and Kazakhstan, the Andronovo culture was succeeded by the Karasuk culture.
The Andronovo culture has been strongly 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."
Sintashta is a site on the upper Ural River. It is famed for its grave-offerings, particularly chariot burials. These inhumations were in kurgans and included all or parts of animals (horse and dog) deposited into the barrow Sintashta is often pointed to as the premier proto-Indo-Iranian site, and that the language spoken was still in the Proto-Indo-Iranian stage. There are similar sites "in the Volga-Ural steppe" (Mallory).
In the northeast, its successor was the Karasuk culture, which is sometimes asserted to be non-Indo-European, and at other times to be specifically proto-Iranian.
References
- "The Northern Frontier in Pre-Imperial China", Cambridge History of Ancient China (pp. 885-966) ch. 13, Nicolo Di Cosmo.
- James P. Mallory, "Andronovo Culture", Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997.