Yes it was disputed since 2017 but this papers abstract says pretty clear that they had the neolithic package but the domesticated animals were probably ovicaprids, cattle and horses came later.
Even the evidence for ovicaprids wasn't great. I know they said so, as do other authors and I think they are right, but they need to bring up undisputable evidence for closing the case. Great would be aDNA from the domesticated animals - and the humans too of course.
I read these two papers, one in German, one in English, with the same people involved, among others:
1. Zu kaukasischen und vorderasiatischen Einfl?ssen bei der Neolithisierung im unteren Donbecken, Von Alexander Gorelik, Andrej Cybrij und Viktor Cybrij.
2. ?Neolithisation? in the NE Sea of Azov region: one step forward, two steps back|
Then the evidence was probably not finally conclusive, that's why I'm asking, since I think the excavations and examination of the material are still ongoing in the area. Would be great if the results are decisive in meantime and even better if ancient DNA samples were taking. Because this region is absolutely key in understanding how the developed steppe culture and the steppe ancestral component came into existence.
Horses were domesticated on the steppe while cattle is from the west. Unfortunately, I can not get access to the full article but reading various other articles about this period the LDC is the best candidate for colonizing the steppe and bringing this neolithic package as far north as Khvalynsk.
Exactly, its just an early offshot, a first colonisation along the Wolga of yet not fully developed steppe people. The crucial point is: They were pretty distant from the centre, most likely mixed with locals, being still more hunter fishers than anything else, and were later just replaced by the more developed Yamnaya, which is also evidenced by their uniparentals.
I don't know why you think that the Lower Don Culture is so much further west, it is actually more south than west of Khvalynsk and the steppe cultures didn't appear much further west of the Don until the times of Sredny Stog about 4500BC. Lower Don, Lower Volga and Middle Volga were much earlier part of a agro-pastoralist lifestyle than Sredny Stog according to most papers about the Neolithic and Eneolithic of Southern Russia.
First of all, the Lower Don Culture, and especially its important early developments, were all taking place in the area of the Sea of Azov, not much up the Don river. Now its a relative thing, but I think, considering the space in between, the centre of Khvalynsk is significantly further North
and East. Sredny Stog on the contrary was to the West of the whole Khvalynsk horizon.
I think these conclusions are still valid:
These imports and imitations reflect the contacts of the steppe people with the Balkans population, namely with the Hamangia culture. Those contacts created a base for formation of the Sredniy Stog and Khalynsk Early Eneolithic cultures with radical changes of the burial rites. The cultural transformation was initiated with an aridity of climate between 5400?5330 ВС with a maximum about 5360 BC, which created an ecological and economic crises in the dry southern regions of steppe. Destruction of traditional way of life of the Surskaja and Low Don populations near the Sea of Azov and their close contacts during previous times gave an impulse for the formation of the new Sredniy Stog culture on the base of their traditions located in the Sea of Azov area. The first period of this culture is dated about 5250?4800 BC. Pottery with shells in clay, linear and comb decoration, flintheads of spear and arrows, bone plates, pendants from red deer teeth and shell beads are typical for this culture. Their ceramics can be seen as a heritage of the Surskaja tradition, but the set of tools, weapons and adornments copied the Low Don complex (Kotova 2008).
Nadja S. Kotova, The contacts of the Eastern European steppe people with the Balkan population during the transition period from Neolithic to Eneolithic, in PR?HISTORISCHE ARCH?OLOGIE IN S?DOSTEUROPA - BAND 30. p. 315.
About the relationship of Khvalynsk to SSC:
The Khvalynsk Eneolithic culture was formed in the steppe Volga basin practically simultaneously with the Sredniy Stog culture in the Don-Kalmius interflive.
Positioning and borderzone:
The border between the Khvalynsk and Sredniy Stog cultures probably passed between the Don and Volga rivers.
About its development:
Similarity of the Khvalynsk ceramics with pottery of the Late Lower Don and Early Sredniy Stog cultures, as well as with separate vessels of the Orlovka culture allow me to assume, that its formation was connected with human migration about 5200-5150 BC, caused by gradual climate dryness. Probably, that aridity forced a part of the Early Sredniy Stog population from the steppe Don region to move in northern areas along valleys of the Don, Medveditsa and Volga.
Admixture with locals:
On the right bank of Volga the migrants met the local population of the Neolithic Orlovka culture, and probably assimilated its separate groups, as well as some southern groups of the Samara culture. As a result of those complicated processes the Khvalynsk culture was formed.
A layer of the Khvalynsk culture at the Kombak-te site in the north-west of Pricaspian area is dated about 4880?192 BC. Probably, here the Khvalynsk population partly
assimilated the native inhabitants - the population of the Neolithic Pricaspian culture.
Its this admixture which makes the difference and of which David might know now more than before. Nothing new, but now we might have the genetic, the aDNA evidence ready. This admixture was not brought back on a big scale to the West, they were replaced by Yamnaya.
Kotova is also great in explaining how the Western steppe culture (later stages of SSC and related groups) developed under the influence of the expanding and highly influential Cucuteni-Tripolye Culture:
Strange as it may seem, the Tripolye population was more interested in contacts, than the steppe inhabitants. They were newcomers, which gradually
moved to the east through the forest-steppe area, occupying lands, which were settled by the Bug-Dniester and Kievo-Cherkassy Neolithic population. The
Tripolye population needed allies and peaceful relations with the neighbors, especially with those, whose territories were unnecessary for them. Among such
neighbors were the bearers of Azov-Dnieper and Sredniy Stog cultures, who occupied other natural-climatic zone, which was useless for the Tripolye
population during the Early Eneolithic. Even during the Later Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age they occupied only the steppes in the South Bug basin and to
the west of it, staying out of the territories of the Sredniy Stog descendants.
Early Eneolithic in the Pontic Steppe, Nadezhda Sergeevna Kotova, BAR International Series 1735, 2008, p. 121 ff.
The situation was really similar to the Roman expansion, which eliminated the Celtic puffer and created a direct border, trade, contacts and relationships with the Germanics. The TCC expansion brought new ideas and techniques to the steppe people, like the earlier Neolithic colonisations from the West and East. Under the influence of this new contacts, they themselves developed on, but based on a clan and tribe, well organised kin-based structure on a new, higher level. With bigger, more stable alliances and tribal chiefs, even new religious ideas and cults.
For a long time the relations were good, but when they deteriorated, with worsening natural conditions and pressure from the East, the formerly allied or even dependent steppe people turned on the TCC. If you look at the development of the Lower Don Culture to Sredny Stog to late Sredny Stog and Dereivka, then to Corded Ware and Usatovo, there is no need or place for a big impact of Khvalynsk. As it seems not even for Yamnaya. They were just the earlier offshot going up the Wolga which replaced and partly assimilated preceding local populations. That's there role in this story and that's it. Some elements might have been assimilated by the later groups from the Western/Southern steppe, but how much is up to more detailed genetic analyses.