Andronovo Culture

Andronovo Culture 

an archaeological culture from the Bronze Age. It was identified in the 1920’s by S. A. Teploukhov and is named after the village of Andronovo, near Achinsk. The Andronovo culture is regarded as a conventional term for a community of partially related cultures that were spread over the territory of Kazakhstan, western Siberia, and the southern Urals. In the west it came into contact with a culture characterized by the use of notched logs in construction. There is no unanimity of opinion among researchers regarding the boundaries of the territory and the basic features common to this community of local cultures. Neither is there agreement on the question of the exact time when this culture existed. It is dated approximately in the middle and the second half of the second millennium B.C. Artifacts from the cultures of the Andronovo community are represented in settlements of various kinds (with remnants of semisubterranean and ground-level dwellings) and by burial grounds (with graves, more rarely with cremation sites). The burial sites are often marked by round low embankments and sometimes by stone barriers. At the burial sites the following kinds of items have been found: flint arrowheads, bronze tools and weapons, beads of copper and paste, and belled gold and copper earrings. The ceramics are flat-bottomed, as a rule, and consist of ornamented pots, jars, and rectangular “dishes.”

REFERENCES

Teploukhov, S. A. “Opyt klassifikatsii drevnikh metallicheskikh kul’tur Minusinskogo kraia.” In the collection Materialy po etnografii, vol. 4, issue 2. Department of Ethnography of the Russian State Museum. Leningrad, 1929.
Kiselev, S. V. Drevniaia istoriia Iuzhnoi Sibiri. Moscow-Leningrad, 1949.
Chernikov, S. S. Vostochnyi Kazakhstan ν epokhu bronzy. Moscow, 1960.
Sal’nikov, K. V. Ocherki drevnei istorii Iuzhnogo Urala. Moscow, 1967.
Istoriia Sibiri s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei, vol. 1. Leningrad, 1968.