Yamnaya Groups and Tumuli west of the Black Sea

Ten thousand round tumuli characterize the plains around the lower Danube, its tributaries and the central Carpathian basin. The very origin of their erection goes often back to the 4th and the 3rd millennium B. C. About 500 excavated tumuli from the present countries of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary testify to their constructors: populations of the “Yamnaya Culture”, known also under the terms “Pit Grave Culture” or “Ochre Grave Culture”. Typical are primary single graves in rectangular pits dug into the underground before the erection of the tumuli, and secondary single graves in the tumulus filling often accompanied by a further tumulus heightening. The position of the body is either supine with flexed legs or a crouched position on the side; in any case, usually orientated in a west-east direction. Intensive strewing of ochre powder, textiles, furs and mats for the pit walls and floors, and wooden beams to cover it, are further characteristics, along with a general lack of accompanying grave gifts. The originally north eastern Pontic Yamnaya-complex has for a long time been invoked as the key example of a large-scale migration in later prehistory, flooding foreign people over Eastern and Central eastern Europe (M. G imbutas’ third wave, e.g. Gimbutas 1981). However, more sophisticated approaches in recent research have shown its confinement only to the familiar steppe environments of the plains, and its capacity for long-distance social contacts back to the Pontic steppe zone, leading D. Anthony (1997), for example, to see a “circular migration” at work. Nevertheless, the tumuli and their burials testify to immigration. It is still unclear whether their economy was entirely pastoral or not. However, burial evidence of oxdrawn wagons (such as Placidol in Bulgaria), as well as, in neighbouring contemporary archaeological cultures, the further impact of domesticated horses, a new preference for cattle herds, and changes to the form and quantity of spindle whorls (“woolly sheep”) could point towards this direction. Recently begun isotope projects on their mobility pattern (87Sr/86Sr; δ18O) and diet (δ13C; δ15N) will validate this model. However, there is a deeper and considerably more geographically extended impact on the ideology, social structure, technology and material culture, which recently led us to create a “Yamnaya Package”, changing the shape of Europe in a wider transformation horizon (Harrison, Heyd 2007).Heyd Volker. Yamnaya Groups and Tumuli west of the Black Sea. In: Ancestral Landscape. Burial mounds in the Copper and Bronze Ages (Central and Eastern Europe – Balkans – Adriatic – Aegean, 4th-2nd millennium B.C.) Proceedings of the International Conference held in Udine, May 15th-18th 2008. Lyon : Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée Jean Pouilloux, 2012. pp. 535-555. (Travaux de la Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée. Série recherches archéologiques, 58