In contrast, the Andronovo horizon, east of the Urals, in many places represented the first introduction of an economy dependent on domesticated animals. Many authorities agree that the Andronovo horizon probably was connected with the early speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, but the specific linkage with Indic or Iranian is disputed (Kuzmina 1994; Parpola 1988; Grigoriev 2002). Western archaeologists tend to doubt whether any prehistoric culture can be identified with any language, since the methods for linking language and material culture are poorly defined (Lamberg-Karlovsky 2002). Nevertheless, a strong case can be made that the Indic-speaking composers of the Rig-Veda (oldest parts composed about 1500-1300 BC) and the Iranian-speaking composers of the Avesta (oldest parts composed about 1200-1000 BC) probably were derived from steppe populations with a pastoral economy. The Andronovo horizon was in the right place at the right time to represent the parental culture, and it had demonstrated and close contact with the cultures of the Iran-Afghan border regions in the region south of the Syr Darya River. Our excavations at Krasnosamarskoe revealed the remains of a mid-winter dog-centered ritual that corresponds in its details with ceremonies described in the Rig Veda, providing a specific link between a steppe Srubnaya ritual of 1700-1800 calBC and a ritual described later in the Rig Veda.

Western archaeologists' understanding of Bronze Age subsistence economies in the steppes is improving with the increasing number of international projects. In the past, Western attempts to integrate steppe economic prehistory with the prehistories of neighboring regions in Europe and the Near East have suffered from five problems: 1. the essential publications are in Russian and Ukrainian; 2. most Soviet and post-Soviet excavations have not systematically collected paleo-botanical data so we have little information on prehistoric agriculture; 3. theories of culture change in Soviet and post-Soviet archaeology depend too much on simplistic mechanisms of climate change and migration, neglecting internal political, social and economic factors; 4. a linear model of evolutionary economic stages has been imposed on steppe prehistory, obscuring the rich variety of steppe economic adaptations; and finally 5. steppe archaeology has focused on individual sites, primarily cemeteries, rather than considering whole landscapes.

The Samara Valley Project (1995-2002) was a landscape-oriented cooperative international research program funded by the National Geographic Society, the US National Science Foundation, the Russian Institute of Archaeology, the Freedman Foundation, the Institute for the History and Archaeology of the Volga (IHAV), and Hartwick College. The project focused on Srubnaya sites in the northern Russian steppes east of the Volga River, in the Samara Oblast.

The Samara River flows from east to west , from the southern Urals into the Volga, and runs along the northern edge of the steppe zone. South of the Samara River there are no large patches of forest, and the left-bank Volga tributaries in the steppe zone are all much smaller and less productive than the Samara. The Samara valley has always been an important east-west corridor between the Asian steppes, east of the Urals, and the European steppes, west of the Urals. Archaeological teams from IHAV have excavated dozens of Bronze Age sites in the Samara Valley.

At the beginning of the LBA, about 1900-1800 BC, people in the Samara Oblast began to live in a new way. Earlier, in the Middle Bronze Age (MBA),people occupied sites only briefly, probably staying in tents or wagons, and they left only occasional light scatters of broken pottery. In the LBA permanent timber buildings were erected and thick middens of garbage accumulated. Settlement sites became archaeologically visible as if a veil had been lifted across the northern steppe and forest-steppe. About 150 Srubnaya settlements and 60 Srubnaya kurgan cemeteries are known in the Oblast, where there were only 10 very small scatters of MBA ceramics to represent MBA settlements in a landscape with at least 50 EBA and MBA kurgan cemeteries (see above).

The reasons for this dramatic sedentarization event are not understood, largely because the Srubnaya subsistence economy is poorly understood. The standard description of both the Srubnaya and Andronovo economies is "complex agro-pastoralism", a mixture of agriculture and pastoralism with a high degree of sedentism and short-distance herd migrations (Khazanov 1984; Kuzmina 1994; Otroshchenko 2003). Evidence for cereal agriculture has been found at western Srubnaya sites in Ukraine, but the presence of agriculture in sites located east of the Don is disputed (Chernykh 1997; Muñiz and Antipina 2003).

What caused the Srubnaya people to create larger, more visible settlements in the northern steppe after about 1900-1800 calBC?

How sedentary were they? Were these settlements agricultural centers occupied all year? Or herding centers, occupied only seasonally?

Where were seasonal herding camps located, how often were herding camps occupied, and during which seasons?

The Samara Valley Project was designed to answer these questions. We targeted not just one settlement, but the seasonal circulation of people and animals between three different places in the Srubnaya landscape (Figure 3):

1. a permanent settlement at Krasnosamaraskoe;

2. a cemetery next to the settlement;

3. herding camps up to 25 km away, at the sites of Peschanyi Dol 1, 2 and 3.

We also collected data from independent Russian excavations at the Srubnaya copper mining site, Mikhailovka Ovsianka (@60 km away - site #126 on the Samara Oblast map above).

Our goal was to recapture the seasonal rhythm of economic activities across a Late Bronze Age landscape.

The project’s preliminary conclusions are discussed under seven headings:

Site Descriptions and Landscape Chronology: Establishing Contemporaneity

Seasonality

Environmental Conditions and Climate

Economy and Diet

The Krasno Samarskoe IV Kurgan Cemetery

Ritual Activities: The Dog Days of Winter

Metals and Mining

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