David Anthony on Metallurgy

[Angela]

Thanks to Jean Manco I have been alerted to the fact that David Anthony just uploaded to accademia.edu his 2010 paper called, " Copper Metallury-The Lost World of Old Europe-The Danube Valley-5,000-3500 BC." This is undoubtedly the paper which accompanied the exhibit on the topic which came out about the same time.

This is the link:

https://www.academia.edu/6063906/Co..._BC_ed_DWAnthony_and_JYChi2010PrincetonUPress

The timing is interesting, I think, given that we are on the eve of the publication of the papers on Corded Ware/Yamnaya and Samara.

Anyway, he begins with a very well written and therefore clear review of the development of metallurgy in the Near East. Some of us have discussed the various ways that it could have developed, so you might find it an interesting read.

Of interest considering matters we have been discussing, he states that by the late 5th millennium, there were four centers of metallurgy in the Near East, mountainous SE Anatolia (the first center, and, of course, where farming also first developed), S.E. Anatolia closer to the coast, the Levant west of the Jordan, and highland Iran.

He takes a rather non-committal attitude toward the issue of where copper metallurgy first developed, the Near East or the southeast Balkans.
"Not so long ago it was generally assumed that European metallurgy was derived from the Near East, whence it spread to the Aegean and then into the Balkan peninsula".

But, based on carbon dating by Renfrew, it was "suggested that production of copper in the Balkans was an indigenous, independent, or nearly independent development...It would not be unreasonable to suggest that copper smelting began during the late sixth millennia BC [in the Balkans] and somewhat later in Anatolia. But, this conditional European priority depends on the resolution of slag like material from Catal Hoyuk level VIA, which would give priority back to Anatolia".

He also goes on to say that it's unclear whether the four centers in the Near East and the southeastern Balkans had influence on each other culturally.The earliest alloying seems to have occurred in the middle of the 5th millennium BC in both south eastern Anatolia and Varna. He then points out that arsenical copper objects were unusual in south east Europe and Iran, and that lost wax casting was confined to the Levant until the later 4th millennium BC. Additionally, he points out that whereas the oldest use of native copper in southeast Europe was in the northern part of Starcevi Crist, pretty far from a trade or technology route from the Near East, copper objects were by no means common there, and the earliest copper smelting was in Vinca 5400 BC.
.
Rounding out the picture is this statement..."Smelting and casting...the only operations shared across all of these metal craft centers...could have been invented independently in connection with high temperature ceramic in kilns."

So, he's taking a very cautious position in all of this. What is clear, I think, is that there is no indication it was invented in the Balkans and spread from there to the Near East. It's possible that it developed independently in a Neolithic context in both places, but with better analysis and dating, it might be that the pre-Renfrew analysis was correct, and that it spread along long established trade routes from the Near East to south east Europe.

 

[Aberdeen]

Very interesting. But his comment about copper smelting possibly being invented independently in connection with high temperature ceramic in kilns fits with what some other archeologists have suggested about the origins of copper smelting, simply because copper melts at a lower temperature than is needed for firing glazed ceramics. So maybe we should be arguing about where high quality ceramics originated from, if it's a precondition of copper smelting. The use of high temperature kilns could have spread out from one source, leading to multiple independent inventions of copper smelting.

 

[bicicleur 2]

interesting review
i didn't realize the actual copper smelting was done that far from the mines
i think copper smelting was a specialised skill which was learned from father to son
probably it was done under the supervision of some chief
i've read once coppersmelter were very well fed and rewarded

the end of the old europe still seems to be a mystery

 

[Yetos]

so Rudna Glava Serbia could be the older copper mine and the first that entered chalkolithic era?

but interesting is the case of gold mettalurgy, the only known metallurgy that goes opposite the kurgan hypothesis

 

[Angela]

bicicleur;443952]interesting review
i didn't realize the actual copper smelting was done that far from the mines
i think copper smelting was a specialised skill which was learned from father to son
probably it was done under the supervision of some chief
i've read once coppersmelter were very well fed and rewarded

Yes, I noticed that too:

"I Lichardus and M. Lichardus then proposed a model for the formation of the Copper Age cultures of the Balkans and the lower Danube Valley that assumed an exchange and mutual influence between indigenous Old European farmers and nomadic stock breeders from the steppes resulting in a specific type of burial rite".

At least here in this article I don't see any indication that copper working moved from the steppe to the Balkan communities of "Old Europe". He seems rather to be saying that if it didn't develop first in the Near East, even as far south as the Levant, and then diffuse to south eastern Europe, it developed independently in both places. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't know of any steppe movements into the Levant or even southeastern Anatolia at those very early periods.


Then there's this: "no generally accepted explanation is at hand for its abrupt end. "Hypotheses of an invasion of nomadic people from the steppe have been widely criticized. Presently, the most accepted explanation for this sharp decline, one that includes also the Aegean cultures, is that the environment altered-due to a climatic change-in a way that was unsuitable for the economy of the tell settlements."

Well, maybe for a while archaeologists just didn't want to admit there was widespread migration and some butchery involved, at least of men. That isn't to say that climate change didn't weaken this culture, as it weakened the Roman empire, making them it prey for the peoples at the periphery.

In this regard, I found this interesting:
"In western Romania and eastern Hungary, the Bodrogkeresztur culture evolved around 4,000 BC". It was marked by "smaller, more ephemeral sites", more cattlebreeding, but rich in metal finds."

One of the big questions I have is were these Old Europe people starting to adapt to a new way of life, steppe people, or a mixture of both?

Ed. The Bodrogkeresztur culture :
http://www.donau-archaeologie.de/doku.php/kulturen/bodrogkeresztur_english_version

 

[LeBrok]

Then there's this: "no generally accepted explanation is at hand for its abrupt end. "Hypotheses of an invasion of nomadic people from the steppe have been widely criticized. Presently, the most accepted explanation for this sharp decline, one that includes also the Aegean cultures, is that the environment altered-due to a climatic change-in a way that was unsuitable for the economy of the tell settlements."

Well, maybe for a while archaeologists just didn't want to admit there was widespread migration and some butchery involved, at least of men. That isn't to say that climate change didn't weaken this culture, as it weakened the Roman empire, making them it prey for the peoples at the periphery.

In this regard, I found this interesting:
"In western Romania and eastern Hungary, the Bodrogkeresztur culture evolved around 4,000 BC". It was marked by "smaller, more ephemeral sites", more cattlebreeding, but rich in metal finds."

Climatic changes and loss of food production capacity, were always my favorite explanations of civilization rise and collapse, migrations and cultural changes.
Cold or dry decades->substantial drop in food production->famine in villages, no surplus food for cities-> cities die off->loss of knowledge = end of civilization->dark ages


I like Anthony's writing, the story telling style.

It is estimated that 500 thousand kg of copper was smelted during copper age in Balkans. Wow, that's probably 1 kg of copper per every person in Balkans at the end of copper age. I guess most of it was turned into bronze later on, or got buried with people. Although only rich could afford burring very expensive items with their dead.

 

[bicicleur 2]

Yes, I noticed that too:

"I Lichardus and M. Lichardus then proposed a model for the formation of the Copper Age cultures of the Balkans and the lower Danube Valley that assumed an exchange and mutual influence between indigenous Old European farmers and nomadic stock breeders from the steppes resulting in a specific type of burial rite".



Then there's this: "no generally accepted explanation is at hand for its abrupt end. "Hypotheses of an invasion of nomadic people from the steppe have been widely criticized. Presently, the most accepted explanation for this sharp decline, one that includes also the Aegean cultures, is that the environment altered-due to a climatic change-in a way that was unsuitable for the economy of the tell settlements."

Well, maybe for a while archaeologists just didn't want to admit there was widespread migration and some butchery involved, at least of men. That isn't to say that climate change didn't weaken this culture, as it weakened the Roman empire, making them it prey for the peoples at the periphery.

In this regard, I found this interesting:
"In western Romania and eastern Hungary, the Bodrogkeresztur culture evolved around 4,000 BC". It was marked by "smaller, more ephemeral sites", more cattlebreeding, but rich in metal finds."

One of the big questions I have is were these Old Europe people starting to adapt to a new way of life, steppe people, or a mixture of both?

Ed. The Bodrogkeresztur culture :
http://www.donau-archaeologie.de/doku.php/kulturen/bodrogkeresztur_english_version

what strikes me is that David Anthony gave another explanation in his book The wheel the horse and the language dated 2007

there he explains there was a climate change, but he also mentions the destructions and burning of many farmer villages near the Danube delta
also the appearance of horse skeletons in graves
what I understood, climate change did affect food production in old europe, but it also made winters more difficult for cattle to survive on the steppe
so steppe people drove their cattle into the Danube delta
it was both, climate change and people of old europe who were no match for horseriding people from the steppe

in this review dated 2010 he says that view has been criticized and the only clue left is climate change

it is undeniable steppe people had infiltrated into the Balkan area and I can't believe climate change is the only explanation for the disruption of old europe

"a model for the formation of the Copper Age cultures of the Balkans and the lower Danube Valley that assumed an exchange and mutual influence between indigenous Old European farmers and nomadic stock breeders from the steppes resulting in a specific type of burial rite"

I find this explanation weak, and appearantly David Anthony also stresses the word 'assumed'

The Bodrogkeresztur culture : I just read the article diagonnaly. What strikes me : no horse skeletons in the graves

I think most of the steppe people that entered the Balkans 6000 years ago stayed in the area east of the Black Sea :

Gumelnita culture replaced by Cernavoda

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumelniţa–Karanovo_culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cernavodă_culture

there was a destruction horizon between both and there seem to be 2 tribes :

a dominant elite (steppe people) on the hilltops and the indogenous 'old europe' people below

 

[bicicleur 2]

At least here in this article I don't see any indication that copper working moved from the steppe to the Balkan communities of "Old Europe". He seems rather to be saying that if it didn't develop first in the Near East, even as far south as the Levant, and then diffuse to south eastern Europe, it developed independently in both places. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't know of any steppe movements into the Levant or even southeastern Anatolia at those very early periods.

6000 years ago there were no mines in the steppe and no knowledge of copper ore smelting
most copper items came from the Balkans, their own smithing was of poor quality

so when steppe people arrived in the Balkans the smiths probably got a special status beacuse of their specialised knowledge

as for the invention of copper smelting, there seem to be 4 or 5 centers and the question is did they invent it sperately (with the aid of kilns) or was there a common source?
a common source might be Anatolia and it may have spread with the milk revolution : the invention of dairy products consumable by people uncapable to consume raw milk :
http://www.nature.com/news/archaeology-the-milk-revolution-1.13471
this started in Anatolia and spread in all directions
it spread into Europe through
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamangia_culture and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lengyel_culture

as for the timing of the first copper smelting in the Balkans :
the Belovode site was occupied since 5400 BC, but first proof of copper ore smelting is 5000 BC

these could well have been smiths from Anatolia spreading along with the milk revolution

 

[Angela]

what strikes me is that David Anthony gave another explanation in his book The wheel the horse and the language dated 2007

there he explains there was a climate change, but he also mentions the destructions and burning of many farmer villages near the Danube delta
also the appearance of horse skeletons in graves
what I understood, climate change did affect food production in old europe, but it also made winters more difficult for cattle to survive on the steppe
so steppe people drove their cattle into the Danube delta
it was both, climate change and people of old europe who were no match for horseriding people from the steppe

in this review dated 2010 he says that view has been criticized and the only clue left is climate change

it is undeniable steppe people had infiltrated into the Balkan area and I can't believe climate change is the only explanation for the disruption of old europe

"a model for the formation of the Copper Age cultures of the Balkans and the lower Danube Valley that assumed an exchange and mutual influence between indigenous Old European farmers and nomadic stock breeders from the steppes resulting in a specific type of burial rite"

I find this explanation weak, and appearantly David Anthony also stresses the word 'assumed'

The Bodrogkeresztur culture : I just read the article diagonnaly. What strikes me : no horse skeletons in the graves

I think most of the steppe people that entered the Balkans 6000 years ago stayed in the area east of the Black Sea :

Gumelnita culture replaced by Cernavoda

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumelniţa–Karanovo_culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cernavodă_culture

there was a destruction horizon between both and there seem to be 2 tribes :

a dominant elite (steppe people) on the hilltops and the indogenous 'old europe' people below

I've read Anthony's book, but it was a while ago when I got access through a library, so I can't check the references. (I'm going to see if I can get access again, in anticipation of the new papers.) Is there a date and a specific location and a particular context for the horse skeletons in the graves? It makes a difference if they appear in the Balkans or immediately adjacent in the West Pontic region 4500 BC or 3600 BC or 2800 BC. The recent papers I've seen track the horse domestication to the Botai. At what point and in what culture is there evidence through bits or other paraphernalia for the actual riding of horses versus the eating of them? Certainly, the first evidence of chariots on the steppe is 2,000 BC all the way east in Sintashta so I don't see how they could have played any role in the fall of Old Europe.

Sorry, I was the one who italicized the word "assumed" just to show how cautious he was in this article. I should have added "italics mine". It still remains that he seems to now be making very non-committal statements.

I think another thing that has to be considered is that if the people on the steppe were cattle breeding, they were already neolithicized. (Pastoralism is just one form of the farming revolution.) The question is, by whom?

As for the Gulmenita culture link, that led me to the Wiki article on Cucuteni Tripolyte, where I found this:

"Cucuteni and the neighbouring Gumelniţa-Karanovo cultures seem to be largely contemporary, "Cucuteni A phase seems to be very long (4600-4050) and covers the entire evolution of Gumelniţa culture A1, A2, B2 phases (maybe 4650-4050)."[22]"

And this: " Pottery remains from this early period (of Cucuteni-my insert) are very rarely discovered; the remains that have been found indicate that the ceramics were used after being fired in a kiln."

And this: "The white-painting technique found on some of the pottery from this period was imported from the earlier and contemporary (5th millennium) Gumelniţa-Karanovo culture. Historians point to this transition to kiln-fired, white-painted pottery as the turning point for when the Pre-Cucuteni culture ended and Cucuteni Phase (or Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture) began.<sup>[6]"

So, are we to take it that the kiln technology came from Gurmelnita-Karanovo? If that is the case, and Gurmelnita-Karanovo stems from the Neolithic Boian culture, then that is the source of the kiln technology.

Here is what Wiki says about Boian Culture:
"The Boian culture emerged from two earlier Neolithic groups: the Dudeşti culture that originated in Anatolia (present-day Turkey); and the Musical note culture (also known as the Middle Linear Pottery culture or LBK) from the northern Subcarpathian region of southeastern Poland and western Ukraine.[2]"</sup>

I also found this about a Boian settlement called Harsova:
http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/harsova/en/f-vil.htm
"[SIZE=-1]At Hârsova, the Boian and Hamangia cultures shared the common border of their respective territories. From fragments of the Cucuteni culture found at the tell, we see that the Gumelnita had contacts with the Cucuteni who lived a hundred kilometers to the north. Lastly, the Cernavoda I people, coming from the east, in contact with the Gumelnita culture (which they replaced in Dobrogea), were also subject to south-anatolian influences, while still sustaining relations with the Cucuteni world. "[/SIZE]

So, do they mean Cernavoda I people were subject to south Anatolian influences in addition to other influences, or do they mean Gumelnita had also been subject to Anatolian influences? We already know that Boian culture was formed from some sort of Anatolian migration if those sources are to be believed.

In that context, the Cernavoda culture is dated from 4,000 to 3200 BC. Cucuteni didn't fall for almost 1,000 years after 4,000 BC, correct? If the Cernavoda people came from the steppes, what did they do, get free passage through Cucuteni territory? Or did they come from the much closer north coast of Anatolia? Or perhaps came from the steppes and squeezed through the coastal stretch where Cucuteni didn't reach? Wherever they came from, their culture apparently hugged the coast.
http://community.dur.ac.uk/j.c.chapman/tripillia/images/IM1.jpg
http://community.dur.ac.uk/j.c.chapman/tripillia/images/IM1.jpg

I do see where the Wiki article says the following:
"It (Cernavoda-my insert) is a successor to and occupies much the same area as the earlier neolithic Karanovo culture, for which a destruction horizon seems to be evident. "

The only source is the David Anthony book "The Coming of the Indo-Europeans" from 1997. So, has he changed his mind or is he just stating that most other scholars disagree?

In that regard, the date for the beginning of their culture is 4,000 BC (4000-3200 BC). The fall of Cucuteni Tripoltye is, I believe, 3,000 BC.

 

[Aberdeen]

I'm dubious about the idea that pastoralists must in every case be farmers who stopped planting crops. We know that the Saami were reindeer hunters who eventually started herding reindeer and there are other groups in Siberia who also became reindeer herders and who were much less likely to have had contact with farmers. So perhaps herders of sheep and/or cattle were in some cases simply hunters who began herding the animals they used to hunt, in order to better manage the resource. Of course, the cattle in question would have needed to be a variety that were much less aggressive, even in their wild state, than European aurochs. And I'm sure there were some cases where farmers moved on to steppe land and decided that pastoralism worked better than crop farming, but I'd dubious of the idea that it was the only way people could have become pastoralists.

 

[Yetos]

the case of reindeer is very strange to me,
today in Europe only in North Lappi Saami and some other bread reinndeer,

but from Herodotus we know that Sarmates also bread reindeer

is there any possibility that this (reindeer breaders) is the Karelian % that is connected with Yamnaa?

 

[Angela]

I've been trying to follow the chronology of the kilns, as per Aberdeen's suggestion. From the sources I cited above, if they are correct, it goes back to the Boian culture.

In the pdf referenced below there is an article starting on page 127 by Hansen-Streily which discusses a Gumelnita village if I'm interpreting it correctly. On page 133 he states that until the excavation of this village, the earliest kilns found were in Cucuteni Tripolyte. There is definitely evidence for them here, however. He also references his prior 2001 paper for the proposition that there is abundant evidence in the Near East for countless, technically diversified pottery kilns. Furthermore, he draws the connection between high temperature kilns for pottery and the development of metallurgy.

(I doubt that women were involved in this particular kind of pottery production. These pithoi, used for grain storage, were apparently so big, and so heavy that it took two to three men to carry them.)

It's in a compilation of papers called "Tells- Social and Environmental Space", dated 2012. You can find the link to the pdf on the scholar.google.com page to which I am providing a link. (It's the second one down.)
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q...ironmental+Space-2012&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0,33

Hansen Streily's prior 2001 paper dates the earliest pottery kiln to the second half of the seventh millennium BC in Yarim Tepe in the Hassuna culture of northern Iraq. It then apparently spread to the Halaf culture, and I also see the Ubaid culture mentioned. I don’t know if that’s the last word on the subject.
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/paleo_0153-9345_2000_num_26_2_4711

Coincidentally, or maybe not, David Anthony’s paper that is the subject of this thread seems to indicate that he is leaning toward the idea that melting of the copper nuggets was not the gateway into the smelting of copper. Rather, he seems to tie it to the smelting first of lead, and he sees the first evidence of the smelting of lead in the same Yarim Tepe of northern Iraq which first developed high temperature pottery kilns. It’s not proof, of course, but it’s certainly suggestive.

He also says the first indication of the alloying of metals, and, as I mentioned previously, lost wax casting, is found in the Middle East.
There’s also the fact that he mentions that azurite and malachite are found in abundance not only in the Balkans but in eastern Anatolia.

Also in this pdf is an article, starting on page 47, called "Tells, Fire and Copper as Social Technologies", by Johannes Muller.

It proposes that social stratification existed before the development of copper metallurgy, which reinforces papers I have read which found the same phenomenon in the Near East. (It never made intuitive sense to me that what seems to me such an integral part of human nature only manifested itself in the Age of Metals. I’m also not sure that it took agriculture and the production of surpluses for it to manifest. Amerindian societies certainly had their own social hierarchies to some extent.)

It also purports to find that copper technology affected different cultures in different ways, at first enforcing development in southeastern Europe, and then later, especially in the northwest areas, triggering destruction. As for the destruction of the tell communities, he maintains that they were the result of internal conflicts over inequality.

I’m not sure I believe it’s the last word on the subject (although it’s certainly not an old view as it dates to 2012), but these kinds of findings may be why the old certainties about these things post Renfrew don’t seem so certain anymore.

(Oh dear, will this mean I can’t blame that Dark Age on the dastardly Indo-Europeans, anymore? Just kidding, guys. It’s just my Gimbutas slip showing. Old influences do leave their mark. )

 

[bicicleur 2]

I'm dubious about the idea that pastoralists must in every case be farmers who stopped planting crops. We know that the Saami were reindeer hunters who eventually started herding reindeer and there are other groups in Siberia who also became reindeer herders and who were much less likely to have had contact with farmers. So perhaps herders of sheep and/or cattle were in some cases simply hunters who began herding the animals they used to hunt, in order to better manage the resource. Of course, the cattle in question would have needed to be a variety that were much less aggressive, even in their wild state, than European aurochs. And I'm sure there were some cases where farmers moved on to steppe land and decided that pastoralism worked better than crop farming, but I'd dubious of the idea that it was the only way people could have become pastoralists.

David Anthony says Russian archeologists didn't use floatation techniques, and as long this isn't used we'll never now for sure whether steppe cattle and horse breeders also cultivated grains. He suggests they didn't. He also says there were certain weeds (cenopods or something - I don't recall the exact name) which grew in abundance on the steppe and they could collect the seeds of this make a very nutritious soup of this, so they didn't need the grains.
Also the lack of caries on their teeth suggests steppe people didn't consume grains.

 

[Angela]

David Anthony says Russian archeologists didn't use floatation techniques, and as long this isn't used we'll never now for sure whether steppe cattle and horse breeders also cultivated grains. He suggests they didn't. He also says there were certain weeds (cenopods or something - I don't recall the exact name) which grew in abundance on the steppe and they could collect the seeds of this make a very nutritious soup of this, so they didn't need the grains.
Also the lack of caries on their teeth suggests steppe people didn't consume grains.

In the Wiki article on Yamnaya: "The culture was predominantly nomadic, with some agriculture practiced near rivers and a few hillforts.^[1] The link is to J.P. Mallory in The Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture. Does anyone have access to it?

The Samara Wiki article doesn't give any guidance.

I wanted to know what Anthony has to say recently, and so I listened to his Penn lectures on you tube again. Now, I realize these are summaries, so if the data I relay and my interpretation of it is off in terms of the book or publications, it would be helpful to know that.

He talks about the Dneiper sites, and the Volga sites, saying they had domesticated cows and sheep but most of the bones from daily food consumption were from wild animals, and they have a large percentage of horse bones. Stable isotope analysis indicates that most of their diet also consisted of fish. The exception is that in the cemeteries, where the animal remains would have been from the animals consumed at feasts to commemorate the dead, the bones were mostly of domesticated animals. So, domesticated animals obviously served a ritual function. He thinks domesticated animals entered the steppes not as a source of everyday food, but for ritual purposes, and perhaps it remained that way for hundreds or up to a thousand years.

The route he proposes is that domesticated animals for herding came from the Near East into Greece and then spread out from there. He says there is little to no evidence for grain cultivation, but the domestic animals were imported into the steppe along with the techniques to manage them from the Balkans around 5200 BC. For the period roughly from 5,000 to 4,000 BC he says they were part time pastoralists. However, to reiterate, he doesn't see them as initially forming a big part of their subsistence economy. To support this contention he uses a study that examined bones found in middens and in ritutal contexts. In the 6th to 5th millennium BC along the Dnieper/Don, wild animals accounted for 65%, cattle 19%, and horses 13% of the regular diet. On the eastern steppe from the Volga to the Urals, wild animals were 40% of the diet, horses 40%, cattle 11%, and sheep 9%. However, in a ritual setting in Khvalnynsk the consumption was 60% sheep and goats, 27% cattle, and 13% horses.

As to whether horses were domesticated in the Dniester and Volga period, in one lecture he says they probably were because they were also treated as ritual animals. In the lecture about horses, he says there's no way of knowing if they were wild or domesticated, and then he shows that the first proof of the domestication of horses is far to the east in the Botai around 3600 BC. (The proof has to do with the use of horse dung, remains of horse milk on ceramics, and wear on the teeth of the horses that could have been caused by a bit.) Mostly, however, they were apparently used as a cheap source of winter meat because they could, unlike cattle and sheep, paw through crusted snow to get to grass, and there is evidence of mass slaughter of them for meat. (Wild herds presumably, like herds of buffalo). He speculates that once they learned about the possibility of domesticating animals from their western steppe neighbors, they decided to try it with horses.

By 3,000 BC in Yamnaya he says there was a change in the diet, and it was a pastoralist diet, which was not very healthy, apparently, in the beginning. They apparently suffered from a lot of nutritional deficiencies in childhood. (I'm reminded of the G2a sample from Corded Ware which was claimed to probably be from a conquered slave because the person had suffered from nutritional deficiencies in childhood. That might not be the correlation.) He suggests that perhaps the stress nutritionally was because they weren't yet accustomed to a totally pastoralist diet, perhaps in part because they didn't yet have the lactase persistence gene. They also show an inordinate amount of human inflicted violence apparently.

Oh, he draws a big line between these southern steppe people and the people in the forest zone, who he maintains kept their mesolithic fishing/hunting/gathering lifestyle for another 2,000 years.

Ed. These lectures were in 2012, so they must be pretty close to his current thinking.

 

[Sennevini]

The Samara Wiki article doesn't give any guidance.

Anthony's book The Horse, Wheel and the Language, which I have, roughly says the following
about the Samara Neolithic culture (along forest-steppe boundary):
according to the bones found, Samara culture had domesticated sheep/goat and cattle,
but 66% of found bones were of horses. Also beaver and red deer were found, which is forest-culture like.
They had cemeteries; apparently horses played a part in the burial rituals.

Further not that much about it.

 

[bicicleur 2]

"Hypotheses of an invasion of nomadic people from the steppe have been widely criticized."
I'd like to know the ground for this critics and the nature of it.
David Anthony also suggested horses were allready domesticated in some form 7000 years ago.
He himself has done a lot of work on bit wear, and he admitted himself it was unconclusive.
Still he asumed horse domestication on the Pontic steppe.
What about the Botaï?
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/southasia/g/040309Botai.htm
The predecessors of the Botai were hunters, but they settled into villages in the northern area of modern Kazakhstan when they changed their economy to a horse-based one. There are 4 known ancient Botai settlements: Botai, Roshchinskoe, Krasnyi Yar, and Vasilkovka IV.
I've read about them elsewhere, but I don't remember where exactly.
There was a sudden shift in lifestyle. Al of a sudden they were making ropes and probably lasso's to catch horses.
From where this sudden shift? Was it indogenous or had other people arrived?
I'm probably biased, I like the story to much.
I like to believe the Botaï people arrived from the Pontic Steppe, just like the Afanasievo people arrived near the Altaï mountains some 800 years later.
Just like the invaders into the Balkans 300 years later and just like corded ware people 1400 years later.
It's difficult to find the hard facts.
I hope we'll learn more soon.

 

[LeBrok]

He talks about the Dneiper sites, and the Volga sites, saying they had domesticated cows and sheep but most of the bones from daily food consumption were from wild animals, and they have a large percentage of horse bones. Stable isotope analysis indicates that most of their diet also consisted of fish. The exception is that in the cemeteries, where the animal remains would have been from the animals consumed at feasts to commemorate the dead, the bones were mostly of domesticated animals. So, domesticated animals obviously served a ritual function. He thinks domesticated animals entered the steppes not as a source of everyday food, but for ritual purposes, and perhaps it remained that way for hundreds or up to a thousand years.

The route he proposes is that domesticated animals for herding came from the Near East into Greece and then spread out from there. He says there is little to no evidence for grain cultivation, but the domestic animals were imported into the steppe along with the techniques to manage them from the Balkans around 5200 BC. For the period roughly from 5,000 to 4,000 BC he says they were part time pastoralists. However, to reiterate, he doesn't see them as initially forming a big part of their subsistence economy. To support this contention he uses a study that examined bones found in middens and in ritutal contexts. In the 6th to 5th millennium BC along the Dnieper/Don, wild animals accounted for 65%, cattle 19%, and horses 13% of the regular diet. On the eastern steppe from the Volga to the Urals, wild animals were 40% of the diet, horses 40%, cattle 11%, and sheep 9%. However, in a ritual setting in Khvalnynsk the consumption was 60% sheep and goats, 27% cattle, and 13% horses.

Ritual sacrifices of domesticated animals could point to cultural influence of Cucuteni or through Caucasus farmers. These HGs could have been converted to farmers religion, where domesticated animals were sacrificed to farmers' gods. This cultural influence should be accompanied by flow of farmer genome into HGs. Culminating in agricultural society of late Yamna.
I think the true herding on stepps flourished when people learned to ride horses. Only then they could have managed big herds and move them around looking for fresh grass. Move them north for summer grazing and south to survive winter. When they mastered steppe herding they became numerous and almost unstoppable.

By 3,000 BC in Yamnaya he says there was a change in the diet, and it was a pastoralist diet, which was not very healthy, apparently, in the beginning. They apparently suffered from a lot of nutritional deficiencies in childhood. (I'm reminded of the G2a sample from Corded Ware which was claimed to probably be from a conquered slave because the person had suffered from nutritional deficiencies in childhood. That might not be the correlation.) He suggests that perhaps the stress nutritionally was because they weren't yet accustomed to a totally pastoralist diet, perhaps in part because they didn't yet have the lactase persistence gene. They also show an inordinate amount of human inflicted violence apparently.

That's expected. However new diet needed to be more beneficial than not, at least for the whole group, to be embraced. They could feed many more and grew in numbers, but yet were not fully adapted to variety of new nutrients. Likewise HGs lack genetic predispositions to farmers diet and have hard time switching to it. Apart from many other genetic changes which might make farming attractive and "enjoyable".

 

[Aberdeen]

......................


Coincidentally, or maybe not, David Anthony’s paper that is the subject of this thread seems to indicate that he is leaning toward the idea that melting of the copper nuggets was not the gateway into the smelting of copper. Rather, he seems to tie it to the smelting first of lead, and he sees the first evidence of the smelting of lead in the same Yarim Tepe of northern Iraq which first developed high temperature pottery kilns. It’s not proof, of course, but it’s certainly suggestive.

He also says the first indication of the alloying of metals, and, as I mentioned previously, lost wax casting, is found in the Middle East.
There’s also the fact that he mentions that azurite and malachite are found in abundance not only in the Balkans but in eastern Anatolia.

Also in this pdf is an article, starting on page 47, called "Tells, Fire and Copper as Social Technologies", by Johannes Muller.

It proposes that social stratification existed before the development of copper metallurgy, which reinforces papers I have read which found the same phenomenon in the Near East. (It never made intuitive sense to me that what seems to me such an integral part of human nature only manifested itself in the Age of Metals. I’m also not sure that it took agriculture and the production of surpluses for it to manifest. Amerindian societies certainly had their own social hierarchies to some extent.)

It also purports to find that copper technology affected different cultures in different ways, at first enforcing development in southeastern Europe, and then later, especially in the northwest areas, triggering destruction. As for the destruction of the tell communities, he maintains that they were the result of internal conflicts over inequality.

I’m not sure I believe it’s the last word on the subject (although it’s certainly not an old view as it dates to 2012), but these kinds of findings may be why the old certainties about these things post Renfrew don’t seem so certain anymore.

(Oh dear, will this mean I can’t blame that Dark Age on the dastardly Indo-Europeans, anymore? Just kidding, guys. It’s just my Gimbutas slip showing. Old influences do leave their mark. )

So maybe the melting of copper and shaping of it in ceramic moulds evolved separately in several places but real smelting originated in one place and spread from there. That would explain why some Copper Age cultures took much longer to produce bronze - if their copper ore didn't naturally contain the impurities needed to make bronze, that didn't happen until they learned proper smelting techniques.

As for hierarchies, all mammals seem to have them but I think some human cultures have more inequality because some technology makes it possible for an elite to have either secret but essential knowledge or military power.

 

[bicicleur 2]

have a look at this paper re Belovode

http://www.metalurgija.org.rs/mjom/vol12/No 2-3/2Sljivar.pdf

on page 6, fig 8 & 9

it's not a kiln, it's a construction specifically for sopper smelting
blowpipes are not shown, but they must have been there too

this existed allready 7000 years ago

 

[Angela]

So maybe the melting of copper and shaping of it in ceramic moulds evolved separately in several places but real smelting originated in one place and spread from there. That would explain why some Copper Age cultures took much longer to produce bronze - if their copper ore didn't naturally contain the impurities needed to make bronze, that didn't happen until they learned proper smelting techniques.

As for hierarchies, all mammals seem to have them but I think some human cultures have more inequality because some technology makes it possible for an elite to have either secret but essential knowledge or military power.

This researcher believes that it was furnace smelting, which was developed in the southern Levant, which was the driver for the real developments in metallurgy. The article isn't long, and I think it's pretty persuasive. He claims there are no developmental steps from melting to full blown furnace smelting at other copper working sites. The technology seems to appear as a complete package. He also has interesting things to say about the fact that these craftsmen, as is still the case in tribal Africa, had great status as shamans of a sort, bringing new substances into existence through what would have looked like "magic".

Oh, and I remember you have an interest in the rather intrusive looking metal working sites in Spain. There's a bit in here about them, as well. The paper is from 2009.
http://www.ajaonline.org/sites/default/files/AJA1134Amzallag_0.pdf

As for bronze metallurgy, what Anthony says about Bronze and the Pontic Caspian Steppe in his book is not precisely the way it has been presented by other people. (I have found that parts of the book are available for free at the following link: http://books.google.com/books?id=0F...onze Age on the Pontic Caspian steppe&f=false)

In the google book, Anthony says that the first bronze in Europe can be dated to 3700-3500 B.C. in the northern Caucasus in the form of arsenical bronze. What he doesn't say is that apparently it first appeared in Asia Minor in 4200 BC., so the flow of technology would most probably have been south to north.
See: Hami Ozbal, Ancient Anatolian Metallurgy
http://www.transanatolie.com/english/turkey/Turkey PDF/SOMP-05-Research-Ancient Metallurg-Ozbal.pdf
(Off-topic, but can the derivation of his name be from "Baal"? How cool if that's true!)

The paper includes a chart from Chernynk with that information and a date of 3200 for the Northern Caucasus. In the Anthony book, there's no citation for the earlier date so I don't know if the sites received new radio carbon dates or if there are new sites. Perhaps the actual book provides that info?

Also, Anthony says that bronze only appeared on the steppes and in eastern Europe centuries later in 3300 to 3200 BC. Here there seems to be agreement with the Chernynk chart, which finds arsenical bronze in Moldavia and western Ukraine in 3200 BC. There isn't any, according to the paper, in the Dnieper region until 2600 BC or so.

More importantly, in this section of his book Anthony doesn't talk about tin bronze, which I think is far more important, in a way. The Chernynk chart shows the first actual bronze in Asia Minor around 3000 BC. It then shows up in the northern Balkans and the southern Caucasus in 2500 BC. It doesn't make an appearance on the Pontic Caspian steppe until 1500 BC. The forest zone and the Urals didn't get it until 1200 BC. If they were Indo-Europeanized early, it was an Indo-Europeanization without Bronze weapons.

Is this possible? This goes against everything I've been reading on amateur forums for six years or else I missunderstood what they were saying. Unless the argument is going to be that many of the steppe people had moved to the Balkans at least by 3,000 BC? But even so, regular bronze doesn't show up in the Balkans until 2500 BC. Oh, and the eastern areas like Siberia got full blown Bronze metallurgy before the Pontic Caspian steppe, which raises for me the possibility that the movement of metal into that area was perhaps indeed not due west along the steppe, but perhaps along Frachetti's Inner Asian corridor. I mean, how could it have passed through the Pontic Caspian steppe to western Siberia and Kazakhstan if they had so little of it on the Steppe, and so late?

This is the one contrary paper I was able to find:
http://antiquity.ac.uk/Ant/087/1030/ant0871030.pdf

It locates the first evidence of bronze, based on a find of a sample of bronze foil, in the Balkan Neolithic culture of Gumelnita. I haven't followed the citation trail to see if that holds up in terms of dating, technology, etc., but I don't know if it matters. The destruction of this culture by the first incursions from the steppes (at least according to some accounts) would have put paid to this line of development.

So, it seems to me that at least we can say that Bronze metallurgy was not something discovered by the steppe peoples.

I want to hasten to point out that I'm not an archaeologist specializing in metallurgy. I also am not writing a monograph on the subject, so I haven't followed the citation trail for all these papers, but I think anyone who is going to publish about it should do it.

At the very least, the real story seems to be much more complex than what has been portrayed, and I don't just mean in terms of metallurgy. That applies to the use of wheeled vehicles, the domestication of horses, the use of horses for warfare etc.

The entire package as it was presented at least on the Boards with which we're all familiar-mounted warriors carrying bronze weapons and speaking Indo-European languages-seems to me to belong to a later era...around 2000 BC.

I'm by no means a believer in the spread of the Indo-European languages from Anatolia along with farming, but that elderly enfant terrible, Colin Renfrew, in his witty subtitle relating to the Indo-European Steppe theory, when he called it the "One wheel, a few horses" theory, was locating the areas of weakness in it. He could have added "little metallurgy".

Ed. To provide the link to google books