The name derives from the village of Andronovo in theUzhursky District of Kranoyarsk Krai, Siberia, where the Russian zoologistArkadi Tugarinov discovered its first remains in 1914. Several graves were discovered, with skeletons in crouched positions, buried with richly decorated pottery. The Andronovo culture was first identified by the Russian archaeologistSergei Teploukhov in the 1920s.[18]
The culture ofSarazm (4th–3rd millennium BC) precedes the arrival of the Andronovo steppe culture in South Central Asia in the 2nd millennium BC.[19][20][21]
Currently only two sub-cultures are considered as part of Andronovo culture:[2]
Alakul-Fëdorovo (1750–1550 BC). On the other hand, synchronous Alakul-Fedorovo sites mainly appeared in the second quarter of the second millennium BC, in Southern Urals, along with the persistence of the Alakul materials.[28]
Other authors identify the following sub-culture also as part of Andronovo:
Some authors have challenged the chronology and model of eastward spread due to increasing evidence for the earlier presence of these cultural features in parts of east Central Asia.[31]
The geographical extent of the culture is vast and difficult to delineate exactly. On its western fringes, it overlaps with the approximately contemporaneous, but distinct,Srubna culture in theVolga-Ural interfluvial. To the east, it reaches into theMinusinsk depression, with some sites as far west as the southernUral Mountains,[32] overlapping with the area of the earlierAfanasevo culture.[33] Additional sites are scattered as far south as theKopet Dag (Turkmenistan), thePamir (Tajikistan) and theTian Shan (Kyrgyzstan). The northern boundary vaguely corresponds to the beginning of theTaiga.[32] More recently, evidence for the presence of the culture inXinjiang in far-western China has also been found,[31] mainly concentrated in the area comprisingTashkurgan,Ili,Bortala, andTacheng area.[34] In the Volga basin, interaction with the Srubna culture was the most intense and prolonged, and Federovo style pottery is found as far west asVolgograd. Mallory notes that theTazabagyab culture south of Andronovo could be an offshoot of the former (or Srubna), alternatively the result of an amalgamation of steppe cultures and the Central Asian oasis cultures (Bishkent culture andVakhsh culture).[7] Andronovo influence is thought to have reached as far as theShang dynasty in China, including the introduction of chariots likely via theKarasuk variant of Andronovo and possibly other intermediary cultures.[35][36][37][38][39]
Dates ofMinusinsk Basin cultures, at the easternmost edge of Adronovo culture (Summed probability distribution for new human bone dates, Afanasievo to Tagar cultures).[40]
In the initial Sintashta-Petrovka phase,[34] the Andronovo culture is limited to the northern and western steppes in the southernUrals-Kazakhstan.[7] Since then, at the 2nd millennium, in the Alakul Phase (2000–1700 BC),[3] the Fedorovo Phase (1850–1450 BC)[3] and the final Alekseyevka Phase (1400–1000 BC), the Andronovo cultures move intensively eastwards, expanding as far east as the UpperYenisei River, succeeding the non-Indo-EuropeanOkunev culture.[7]
The Andronovo culture comprised both highly mobile communities and settled villages, with a notable concentration of settlements in its Central Asian regions. Fortifications include ditches, earthen banks as well as timber palisades, of which an estimated twenty have been discovered. Andronovo villages typically contain around two to twenty houses, but settlements containing as many as a hundred houses have been discovered. Andronovo houses were generally constructed frompine,cedar, orbirch, and were usually aligned overlooking the banks ofrivers. Larger homes range in the size from 80 to 300 m2, and probably belonged to extended families, a typical feature among early Indo-Iranians.[7]Soma may have originated in the Andronovo culture.[41]
Andronovo livestock includedcattle,horses,sheep,goats andcamels.[32] The domesticpig is notably absent, which is typical of a mobile economy. The percentage of cattle among Andronovo remains are significantly higher than among their western Srubna neighbours.[7] The horse was represented on Andronovo sites and was used for both riding and traction.[7] According to theJournal of Archaeological Science, in July 2020, scientists fromSouth Ural State University studied twoLate Bronze Age horses with the aid of radiocarbon dating from Kurgan 5 of the Novoilinovsky 2 cemetery in theLisakovsk city in theKostanay region. Researcher Igor Chechushkov, indicated that the Andronovites had an ability on horse riding several centuries earlier than many researchers had previously expected. Among the horses investigated, thestallion was nearly 20 years old and themare was 18 years old. According to scientists, animals were buried with the person they accompanied throughout their lives, and they were used not only for food, but also for harnessing to vehicles and riding.[42][43] Agriculture did not play an important role in the Andronovo economy.[44]
The Andronovo culture is notable for regional advances inmetallurgy.[32] They mined deposits ofcopper ore in theAltai Mountains from around the 14th century BC.[46]Bronze objects were numerous, and workshops existed for working copper.[46]
One of the characteristics of Andronovo culture is its pottery, especially in campsites located in Central Asia, some of them very close to settlements ofBactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex in the south. This pottery is called Incised Coarse Ware (ICW), which is handmade and grey to brown in color, as well as incised with geometrical decoration,[47] spread over much of Eurasian region, fromSouthern Urals toKashgar, a pottery made by late Bronze Age nomads.[48]
"It is likely that militarized elite, whose power was based on the physical control of fellow tribesmen and neighbors with the help of riding and fighting skills, was buried in the Novoilinovsky-2 burial ground. The rider has a significant advantage over the infantryman. There may be another explanation: These elite fulfilled the function of mediating conflicts within the collective, and therefore had power and high social status. Metaphorically, this kind of elite can be called Sheriffs of the Bronze Age" said Igor Chechushkov.[49]
Reconstruction of an Andronovo burial. Lisakovsk Museum
The Andronovo dead were buried intimber orstone chambers under both round and rectangularkurgans (tumuli). Burials were accompanied by livestock, wheeled vehicles, cheek-pieces for horses, and weapons, ceramics and ornaments. Among the most notable remains are the burials of chariots, dating from around 2000 BC and possibly earlier. The chariots are found with paired horse-teams, and the ritualburial of the horse in a "head and hooves" cult has also been found.[7] Some Andronovo dead were buried in pairs, of adults or adult and child.[50]
AtKytmanovo in Russia between Mongolia and Kazakhstan, dated 1746–1626 BC, a strain ofYersinia pestis was extracted from a dead woman's tooth in a grave common to her and to two children.[51] This strain's genes expressflagellin, which triggers the human immune response. However, by contrast with other prehistoricYersinia pestis bacteria, the strain does so weakly; later, historic plague does not express flagellin at all, accounting for its virulence. The Kytmanovo strain was therefore under selection toward becoming a plague[52] (although it was notthe plague).[53] The three people in that grave all died at the same time, and the researcher believes that this para-plague is what killed them.[54]
Most researchers associate the Andronovo horizon with earlyIndo-Iranian languages.[55][56] It is credited with the invention of the spoke-wheeledchariot around 2000 BC,[57][58] if we include theSintashta culture, where the oldest known chariots have been found.[59][60] The association between the Andronovo culture and the Indo-Iranians is corroborated by the distribution ofIranian place-names across the Andronovo horizon and by the historical evidence of dominance by various Iranian-speaking peoples, including theSaka (Scythians),Sarmatians andAlans, throughout the Andronovo horizon during the 1st millennium BC.[7]
TheSintashta site on the upperUral River, noted for its chariot burials and kurgans containing horse burials, is considered thetype site of theSintashta culture, forming one of the earliest parts of the "Andronovo horizon".[61] It is conjectured that the language spoken was still in theProto-Indo-Iranian stage.[62]
Comparisons between the archaeological evidence of the Andronovo and textual evidence of Indo-Iranians (i. e. theVedas and theAvesta) are frequently made to support the Indo-Iranian identity of the Andronovo.[63][64] The modern explanations for the Indo-Iranianization of theIranian plateau and theIndian subcontinent rely heavily on the supposition that the Andronovo expanded southwards into Central Asia or at least achieved linguistic dominance across the Bronze Age urban centres of the region, such as theBactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex. While the earlier phases of the Andronovo culture are regarded as co-ordinate with the late period of Indo-Iranian linguistic unity, it is likely that in the later period they constituted a branch of the Iranians.[7] According to Narasimhan et al. (2019), the expansion of the Andronovo culture towards the BMAC took place via theInner Asia Mountain Corridor.[65]
According to Hiebert, an expansion of the BMAC into Iran and the margin of theIndus Valley is "the best candidate for an archaeological correlate of the introduction of Indo-Iranian speakers to Iran and South Asia",[66] despite the absence of the characteristic timber graves of the steppe in the Near East,[67] or south of the region betweenKopet Dag andPamir-Karakorum.[68][b] Mallory acknowledges the difficulties of making a case for expansions from Andronovo to northern South Asia, and that attempts to link the Indo-Aryans to such sites as the Beshkent and Vakhsh cultures "only gets theIndo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of theMedes, Persians or Indo-Aryans". He has developed theKulturkugel model that has the Indo-Iranians taking overBactria-Margiana cultural traits but preserving their language and religion while moving into Iran and India.[70][66]
Based on its use by Indo-Aryans in Mitanni andVedic India, its prior absence in the Near East andHarappan India, and its 17th–16th century BC attestation at the Andronovo site ofSintashta, Kuzmina (1994) argues that the chariot corroborates the identification of Andronovo as Indo-Iranian. Klejn (1974) and Brentjes (1981) found the Andronovo culture much too late for an Indo-Iranian identification since chariot-using Aryans appear inMitanni by the 15th century BC. However,Anthony & Vinogradov (1995) dated achariot burial atKrivoye Lake to around 2000 BC.[71]
Eugene Helimski has suggested that the Andronovo people spoke a separate branch of Indo-Iranian. He claims that borrowings in theFinno-Ugric languages support this view.[72]Vladimir Napolskikh has proposed that borrowings in Finno-Ugric indicate that the language was specifically of the Indo-Aryan type.[73]
Since older forms of Indo-Iranian words have been taken over in Uralic andProto-Yeniseian, occupation by some other languages (also lost ones) cannot be ruled out altogether, at least for part of the Andronovo area, i. e., Uralic and Yeniseian.[55]
Rasmus G. Bjørn (2022) describes the linguistic heritage of the Andronovo cultural complex as "Indo-Iranic dialect continuum", with a later split between Iranic and Indic. Early Iranic can be associated with later stages of the Andronovo horizon. Indo-Iranian derived loanwords via the Andronovo cultural complex can be found in bothProto-Uralic and later inProto-Turkic, suggesting some forms of contact near theAltai Mountains (specifically theMinusinsk basin) andMongolia respectively. Some loanwords related to horse pastoralism are also found inOld Chinese.[74]
In studies from the mid-2000s, the Andronovo have been described by archaeologists as having cranial features similar to ancient and modern European populations[75][76] though these cranial features are not exclusive to Europeans. Andronovo skulls are similar to those of theSrubnaya culture andSintashta culture, exhibiting features such as dolicocephaly.[c] Through Iranian andIndo-Aryan migrations, this physical type expanded southwards and mixed with aboriginal peoples, contributing to the formation of modern populations of the northernIndian subcontinent.[d]
Fox et al. (2004) established that, during the Bronze and Iron Age period, the majority of the population ofKazakhstan (part of the Andronovo culture during Bronze Age) was of West Eurasian origin (with mtDNA haplogroups such as U, H, HV, T, I and W), and that prior to the thirteenth to seventh century BC, all Kazakh samples belonged to European lineages.[82]
Keyser et al. (2009) published a study of the ancientSiberian cultures, the Andronovo culture, theKarasuk culture, theTagar culture and theTashtyk culture. Ten individuals of the Andronovo horizon in southern Siberia from 1800 BC to 1400 BC were surveyed. Extractions ofmtDNA from nine individuals were determined to represent two samples of haplogroupU4 and single samples ofZ1,T1,U2e,T4,H,K2b andU5a1. Extractions ofY-DNA from one individual was determined to belong to Y-DNA haplogroupC (but not C3), while the other two extractions were determined to belong to haplogroupR1a1a, which is thought to mark the eastward migration of the earlyIndo-Europeans. Of the individuals surveyed, only two (or 22%) were determined to be of Asian ancestry, while seven (or 78%) were determined to be of European ancestry, with the majority beinglight-skinned with predominantlylight eyes andlight hair.[58]
Andronovo costume set (reconstruction). Lisakovsk Museum of History and Culture
In a June 2015 study published inNature, one male and three female individuals of Andronovo culture were surveyed. Extraction ofY-DNA from the male was determined to belong toR1a1a1b. Extractions ofmtDNA were determined to represent two samples ofU4 and two samples ofU2e.[83][84] The people of the Andronovo culture were found to be closely genetically related to the precedingSintashta culture, which was in turn closely genetically related to theCorded Ware culture, suggesting that the Sintashta culture represented an eastward expansion of Corded Ware peoples. The Corded Ware peoples were in turn found to be closely genetically related to theBeaker culture, theUnetice culture and particularly the peoples of theNordic Bronze Age. Numerous cultural similarities between the Sintashta/Andronovo culture, the Nordic Bronze Age and the peoples of theRigveda have been detected.[e]
In a genetic study published inScience in September 2019, a large number of remains from the Andronovo horizon was examined. The vast majority ofY-DNA extracted belonged toR1a1a1b or various subclades of it (particularlyR1a1a1b2a2a). The majority ofmtDNA samples extracted belonged toU, although other haplogroups also occurred. The people of the Andronovo culture were found to be closely genetically related to the people of theCorded Ware culture, thePotapovka culture, theSintashta culture andSrubnaya culture. These were found to harbor mixed ancestry from theYamnaya culture and peoples of the Central EuropeanMiddle Neolithic.[f][g] People in the northwestern areas of Andronovo were found to be "genetically largely homogeneous" and "genetically almost indistinguishable" from Sintashta people. The genetic data suggested that the Andronovo culture and its Sintastha predecessor were ultimately derived of a remigration of Central European peoples withsteppe ancestry back into the steppe.[h] This is in particular defined by the majority (n=12) of R-Z93 SNPs.
Manjusha Chintalapati,Nick Patterson, and Priya Moorjani (in a peer-reviewed paper, July 18, 2022) estimate through DATES (Distribution of Ancestry Tracts of Evolutionary Signals) that genetic characteristics, typical of Andronovo culture's people formed around 900 years before this archaeological culture appeared,c. 2900 BCE.[87]
^Sarianidi states that "direct archaeological data from Bactria andMargiana show without any shade of doubt that Andronovo tribes penetrated to a minimum extent into Bactria and Margianian oases".[69]
^"[M]assive broad-faced proto-Europoid type is a trait of post-Mariupol' cultures, Sredniy Stog, as well as the Pit-grave culture of the Dnieper's left bank, the Donets, and Don... During the period of the Timber-grave culture the population of the Ukraine was represented by the medium type between the dolichocephalous narrow-faced population of the Multi-roller Ware culture (Babino) and the more massive broad-faced population of the Timber-grave culture of the Volga region... The anthropological data confirm the existence of an impetus from the Volga region to the Ukraine in the formation of the Timber-grave culture. During the Belozerka stage the dolichocranial narrow-faced type became the prevalent one. A close affinity among the skulls of the Timber-grave, Belozerka, and Scythian cultures of the Pontic steppes, on the one hand, and of the same cultures of the forest-steppe region, on the other, has been shown... This proves the genetical continuity between the Iranian-speaking Scythian population and the previous Timber-grave culture population in the Ukraine... The heir of the Neolithic Dnieper-Donets and Sredniy Stog cultures was the Pit-grave culture. Its population possessed distinct Europoid features, was tall, with massive skulls... The tribes of the Abashevo culture appear in the forest-steppe zone, almost simultaneously with the Poltavka culture. The Abashevans are marked by dolichocephaly and narrow faces. This population had its roots in the Balanovo and Fatyanovo cultures on the Middle Volga, and in Central Europe... [T]he early Timber-grave culture (the Potapovka) population was the result of the mixing of different components. One type was massive, and its predecessor was the Pit-grave-Poltavka type. The second type was a dolichocephalous Europoid type genetically related to the Sintashta population... One more participant of the ethno-cultural processes in the steppes was that of the tribes of the Pokrovskiy type. They were dolichocephalous narrow-faced Europoids akin to the Abashevans and different from the Potapovkans... The majority of Timber-grave culture skulls are dolichocranic with middle-broad faces. They evidence the significant role of Pit-grave and Poltavka components in the Timber-grave culture population... One may assume a genetic connection between the populations of the Timber-grave culture of the Urals region and the Alakul' culture of the Urals and West Kazakhstan belonging to a dolichocephalous narrow-face type with the population of the Sintashta culture... [T]he western part of the Andronovo culture population belongs to the dolichocranic type akin to that of the Timber-grave culture.[77]
^"The Eurasian steppe nomadic Saka were not immigrants from the Near East but direct descendants of Andronovans, and the mixed character of the Indo-Iranian-speaking populations of Iran and India is the result of a new population spreading among aboriginals with whom a new language is probably to be associated. This conclusion is confirmed by the evidence of Indo-Iranian tradition. TheAryans in theAvesta are tall, light-skinned people with light hair; their women were light-eyed, with long, light tresses... In theRigveda light skin alongside language is the main feature of the Aryans, differentiating them from the aboriginalDáśa-Dasyu population who were a dark-skinned, small people speaking another language and who did not believe in the Vedic gods... Skin color was the basis of social division of the Vedic Aryans; their society was divided into social groupsvarṇa, literally 'color'. The varṇas of Aryan priests (brāhmaṇa) and warriors (kṣatriyaḥ orrājanya) were opposed to the varṇas of the aboriginal Dáśa, called 'black-skinned'..."[78]
^"European Late Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures such as Corded Ware, Bell Beakers, Unetice, and the Scandinavian cultures are genetically very similar to each other... The close affinity we observe between peoples of Corded Ware and Sintashta cultures suggests similar genetic sources of the two... Among Bronze Age Europeans, the highest tolerance frequency was found in Corded Ware and the closely-related Scandinavian Bronze Age cultures... The Andronovo culture, which arose in Central Asia during the later Bronze Age, is genetically closely related to the Sintashta peoples, and clearly distinct from both Yamnaya and Afanasievo. Therefore, Andronovo represents a temporal and geographical extension of the Sintashta gene pool, as there are many similarities between Sintasthta/Androvono rituals and those described in the Rig Veda and such similarities even extend as far as to the Nordic Bronze Age."[83]
^"We observed a main cluster of Sintashta individuals that was similar to Srubnaya, Potapovka, and Andronovo in being well modeled as a mixture of Yamnaya-related and Anatolian Neolithic (European agriculturalist-related) ancestry."[65]
^"Genetic analysis indicates that the individuals in our study classified as falling within the Andronovo complex are genetically similar to the main clusters of Potapovka, Sintashta, and Srubnaya in being well modeled as a mixture of Yamnaya-related andearly European agriculturalist-related or Anatolian agriculturalist-related ancestry."[65]
^"Many of the samples from this group are individuals buried in association with artifacts of the Corded Ware, Srubnaya, Petrovka, Sintashta and Andronovo complexes, all of which harboreda mixture of Steppe_EMBA ancestry and ancestry from European Middle Neolithic agriculturalists (Europe_MN). This is consistent with previous findings showing that following westward movement of eastern European populations and mixture with local European agriculturalists, there was an eastward reflux back beyond the Urals."[65]
^Brown, Dorcas, and David Anthony, (2017)."Bronze Age Economy and Rituals at Krasnosamarskoe in the Russian Steppes", in: The Digital Archaeological Record: "...Particular attention focuses on the role of agriculture during the unusual episode of sedentary, settled pastoralism that spread across the Eurasian steppes with the Srubnaya and Andronovo cultures (1900-1200 BC)..."
^abDegtyareva, A.D., et al., (2019).Metal Products of the Alekseyevka-Sargary Culture From the Middle and Upper Tobol Areas", in: Вестник археологии, антропологии и этнографии. 2019. № 4 (47): "The article describes morphological and typological characteristics of non-ferrous metal, determines the formulae of alloys, as well as identifies techniques used for the production of tools by the Alekseyevka-Sargary culture from the South Trans-Urals (15th/14th and 12th/11th BC)..."
^Baumer, Christoph (18 April 2018).History of Central Asia, The: 4-volume set. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 136.ISBN978-1-83860-868-2. "It is assumed that the Indo–Iranian language family, which appeared around 2200 bc, was related to the cultural complex of Andronovo in eastern Central Asia."
^Beckwith 2009, p. 49: "Archaeologists are now generally agreed that the Andronovo culture of the Central Steppe region in the second millennium BC is to be equated with the Indo-Iranians."
^Anthony, David W. (2007).The Horse The Wheel And Language. How Bronze-Age Riders From the Eurasian Steppes Shaped The Modern World. Princeton University Press.
^Bendezu-Sarmiento, Julio, 2021."The first nomads in Central Asia's steppes (Kazakhstan)", Summary (in French): "...Durant la première étape de la culture d'Andronovo (Bronze ancien à la fin du IIIe millénaire avant n.è.), le cheptel (principalement constitué de bovins) était réduit et le fourrage naturel n'était nullement difficile à trouver dans les pâturages proches des habitations..."
^Bendezu-Sarmiento, Julio, (2022)."The first nomads in Central Asia's steppes (Kazakhstan): Territory, power and religion", in: Eurasian steppe civilization: Human and the Historical and Cultural Environment, Almaty–Turkistan,p. 48: "During the first stage of the Andronovo culture (Early Bronze Age to the end of the 3rd millennium BC), the livestock (mainly cattle) was small and natural fodder was not difficult to find in the pastures near the settlements."
^Hoshko, Tatiana, (2019). "Oriental Technologies in the Production of Cauldrons of Late bronze Age", in _Historiography, Source Studies and Special Historical Disciplines_,SKHID No. 2 (160) March–April 2019, p. 87.
^Nomination to the World Heritage list of Sarazm(PDF). p. 22.Sarazm is unique as a gateway to the steppe world, up to Southern Siberia, during the Chalcolithic period (Afanasevo) long before the spread of the Andronovo steppe culture in South Central Asia in the 2nd millennium BC.
^Grigoriev, Stanislav, (2021)."Andronovo Problem: Studies of Cultural Genesis in the Eurasian Bronze Age"Archived 2021-12-09 at theWayback Machine, in Open Archaeology 2021 (7),p.28: ".... The Fyodorovka dates in the north of the forest-steppe Tobol region are close to the dates in the Southern Transurals and lie in the interval of the 20th–16th centuries BC...Fyodorovka culture, in general, is synchronous with Alakul..."
^Mallory, J.P., (1997)."Andronovo Culture", in J.P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams (eds.), Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data, London and Chicago,p. 20: "...Alekseyevka culture...(1200–1000 BC)..."
^abJia, Peter W., Alison Betts, Dexin Cong, Xiaobing Jia, & Paula Doumani Dupuy, (2017). "Adunqiaolu: new evidence for the Andronovo in Xinjiang, China", in _Antiquity 91 (357)_, pp. 621-639.
^abcdOkladnikov, A. P. (1994), "Inner Asia at the dawn of history",The Cambridge history of early Inner Asia, Cambridge [u.a.]: Cambridge Univ. Press, p. 83,ISBN978-0-521-24304-9
^abYang Jianhua; Shao Huiqiu; Pan Ling (2020). "Chapter 2: The Expansion of Steppe Culture During the Second Millennium B.C.".The Metal Road of the Eastern Eurasian Steppe: The Formation of the Xiongnu Confederation and the Silk Road. Springer Singapore. pp. 47–131.ISBN978-981-329-157-7.
^Kuzmina 2007, pp. 251–257: "It is reasonable to presume that Andronovo influence extended as far as China. In the Anyang culture we find the momentous achievements of a world civilization - metallurgy, wheeled transport and horse-breeding-already in their developed form; the Yellow river displays no preceding development […] the formation of Chinese civilization was stimulated by a western impulse. In the Eurasian steppes metallurgy, wheeled transport and horse-breeding go back to the 4th millennium BC, while the types of celts, spears and single-edged knives of Anyang find their prototypes and analogies in the Andronovo and Seima-Turbino complexes."
^Ventresca Miller, A., Usmanova, E., Logvin, V., Kalieva, S., Shevnina, I., Logvin, A., Kolbina, A., Suslov, A., Privat, K., Haas, K. and Rosenmeier, M., 2014. Subsistence and social change in central Eurasia: stable isotope analysis of populations spanning the Bronze Age transition. Journal of Archaeological Science, 42, pp.525-538.
^Cerasetti, Barbara, (2020)."Who interacted with whom? redefining the interaction between BMAC people and mobile pastoralists in Bronze Age southern Turkmenistan", in: Bertille Lyonnet and Nadezhda A Dubova (eds.),The World of the Oxus Civilization, Routledge,p. 487-488: "...the presence of the so-called Andronovo or steppe culture in campsites located on the sand dunes among BMAC settlements or close to them, has been clearly brought to light...This culture is characterized by a typical gray-brown handmade pottery with incised geometrical decoration (Incised Coarse Ware - ICW)..."
^Cerasetti, Barbara, (1998)."Preliminary Report on Ornamental Elements of 'Incised Coarse Ware'", in: A. Gubaev, G. Koshelenko, and M. Tosi (eds.), Murghab: A Civilization Heartland between River and Desert, Istituto Italiano Per L'Africa E L'Oriente,p. 67: "...a significant amount of Incised Coarse Ware (ICW), related to Bronze Age nomadic stock-riders over a vast portion of Eurasia, between the Urals and [Kashgaria]. Soviet authors have often labelled [it]...as 'Andronovo Ware'..."
^abKeyser, Christine; Bouakaze, Caroline; Crubézy, Eric; Nikolaev, Valery G.; Montagnon, Daniel; Reis, Tatiana; Ludes, Bertrand (May 16, 2009). "Ancient DNA provides new insights into the history of south Siberian Kurgan people".Human Genetics.126 (3):395–410.doi:10.1007/s00439-009-0683-0.PMID19449030.S2CID21347353.
^Hans J.J.G. Holm: The Earliest Wheel Finds, Their Archeology and Indo-European Terminology in Time and Space, and Early Migrations around the Caucasus. Archaeolingua Alapítvány, Budapest, 2019,ISBN978-615-5766-29-9
^Mallory 1989: "The settlement and cemetery of Sintashta, for example, though located far to the north on the Trans-Ural steppe, provides the type of Indo-Iranian archaeological evidence that would more than delight an archaeologist seeking their remains in Iran or India."
^Keyser et al. 2009, p. 405: "Moreover, the south Siberian tribes under study (Andronovo, Karasuk, Tagar) have been described as exhibiting pronounced Europoid features (Kozintsev et al. 1999; Lebedynsky 2003; Moiseyev 2006)."
Fussman, G.; Kellens, J.; Francfort, H. P.; Tremblay, X. (2005).Āryas, aryens et iraniens en Asie centrale. Paris: Collège de France.ISBN2-86803-072-6.
Jones-Bley, K.; Zdanovich, D. G. (eds.),Complex Societies of Central Eurasia from the 3rd to the 1st Millennium BC, 2 vols, JIES Monograph Series Nos. 45, 46, Washington D.C. (2002),ISBN0-941694-83-6,ISBN0-941694-86-0.
Koryakova, L. (1998a)."Sintashta-Arkaim Culture". The Center for the Study of the Eurasian Nomads (CSEN). Archived from the original on February 9, 1999. Retrieved16 September 2010.
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