Yamnaya culture

Yamnaya culture

Alternative names	Pit Grave culture Yamna culture Ochre Grave culture Yamnaya Horizon
Geographical range	Pontic–Caspian steppe in Europe
Period	Copper Age, Bronze Age
Dates	c. 3300 – 2600 BC
Preceded by	Sredny Stog culture, Samara culture, Khvalynsk culture, Dnieper–Donets culture, Repin culture, Maykop culture, Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, Cernavodă culture, Usatove culture, Novosvobodnaya culture
Followed by	North: Corded Ware culture [1] West: Catacomb culture, Vučedol culture East: Poltavka culture
Defined by	Vasily Gorodtsov

The Yamnaya culture^[a] or the Yamna culture,^[b] also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, is a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic–Caspian steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BC.^[2] It was discovered by Vasily Gorodtsov following his archaeological excavations near the Donets River in 1901–1903. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: Я́мная (romanization: yamnaya) is a Russian adjective that means 'related to pits (yama)', as these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers. Research in recent years has found that Mikhaylovka, in lower Dnieper river, Ukraine, formed the Core Yamnaya culture (c. 3600–3400 BC).^[3]

The Yamnaya economy was based upon animal husbandry, fishing, and foraging, and the manufacture of ceramics, tools, and weapons.^[4] The people of the Yamnaya culture lived primarily as nomads, with a chiefdom system and wheeled carts and wagons that allowed them to manage large herds.^[5] They are also closely connected to Final Neolithic cultures, which later spread throughout Europe and Central Asia, especially the Corded Ware people and the Bell Beaker culture,^[5] as well as the peoples of the Sintashta, Andronovo, and Srubnaya cultures. Back migration from Corded Ware also contributed to Sintashta and Andronovo.^[6] In these groups, several aspects of the Yamnaya culture are present.^[c] Yamnaya material culture was very similar to the Afanasievo culture of South Siberia, and the populations of the two cultures are genetically indistinguishable.^[1] This suggests that the Afanasievo culture may have originated from the migration of Yamnaya groups to the Altai region or, alternatively, that both cultures developed from an earlier shared cultural source.^[7]

Genetic studies have suggested that the people of the Yamnaya culture can be modelled as a genetic admixture between a population related to Eastern European Hunter-Gatherers (EHG)^[d] and people related to hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus (CHG) in roughly equal proportions,^[8] an ancestral component which is often named "Steppe ancestry", with additional admixture from Anatolian, Levantine, or Early European farmers.^[9][10] Genetic studies also indicate that populations associated with the Corded Ware, Bell Beaker, Sintashta, and Andronovo cultures derived large parts of their ancestry from the Yamnaya or a closely related population.^{[1][11][12][13]}

The Yamnaya culture is of particular interest to researchers, as the widely-accepted Kurgan hypothesis posits that the people that produced the Yamnaya culture spoke a stage of the Proto-Indo-European language. The speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language embarked on the Indo-European migrations, that gave rise to the Indo-European languages of today.

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