Sites of the Fedorovo type extend from Central Kazakhstan to the Yenisey. In
the Urals sites of the Alakul type are found while mixed types prevail in north
and central Kazakhstan; these formed as a result of the interaction between the
Alakul and the Fedorovo tribes. Differences are evident only between the
extreme sites of the typological scale. In linguistic terms, this continuous chain
of interrelated complexes can be described as the area of settlement of the
bearers of related dialects of the Indo-Iranian community.
The sites of the Fedorovo type demonstrate the closest resemblance to the
reconstructed culture of the Vedic Aryans: the existence of inhumation alongside
the prevailing rite of cremation, the rite of sati, specific types of ritual ceramics.
This provides good reason to suggest that the Fedorovan tribes were Indo-Aryans.
Three chronological stages are distinguished in the history of migration of the
steppe tribes to Central Asia and farther south.
Stage I: the 20th - 17th centuries BC: the appearance of cheek-pieces of the
Sintashta type on the Zeravshan in the grave of Zardcha-Halifa and a cult of the
horse from the Urals and later ceramics of the Petrovka type in the camp of
Tugai near the agricultural settlement of Sarazm. There is no evidence that they
reached India. According to the materials of Dzharkutan, the newcomers were
not numerous but they employed horses and chariots and established elite
dominance and adopted the culture of the BMAC. It is not known whether some
part of this population moved south and was among those who established the
BMAC contacts with Baluchistan.
And there is, of course, no data to support the theory that it was the early
Andronovans who destroyed the Harappan civilization and were guilty of
the massacre in Mohenjo-daro, as M. Wheeler (1968) assumed.
His opponents pointed out, first, that in other Harappan cities there
were no signs of violence and destruction. Secondly, according to the stratigraphy
of Harappa, there is a chronological hiatus between the downfall of this
city and Cemetery H. This leads to the conclusion that the collapse of the centers
of civilization was caused by ecological, social and political reasons (Bongard-
Levin and Ilin 1985).
The hypothesis of B. and R. Allchin (1973) is very probable: they thought
that pastoral tribes settled on the frontiers of the Harappan centers that were
experiencing a crisis because of ecological disasters and internal social and
economic catastrophies. The downfall of the cities cleared the way for the
newcomers, and they began to settle along the borders of oases. Yet we are not
speaking of hordes but isolated groups. Meanwhile a part of the indigenous
Harappan population moved east to Haryana and south to Gujarat where the
Harappan sites, as some scholars think, are younger than in the west.
Of extreme importance is the continuity in the culture of the Harappan and
Post-Harappan period on the periphery of Harappan territory (Joshi 1978). This
proves that the movement of the Aryan groups was slow and gradual. Initially
the newcomers and the aborigines settled near each other but not together.
Vedic sources clearly reflect the relations with the indigenous population.
Already in the 19th century the existence of borrowings from the local languages
was discovered. Now there is a large literature concerning this problem (Witzel
1999 and others).
There are very few loan-words in the Rigveda, but some names of tribes
included in the Aryan community and the names of several rulers and especially
priests are definitively non-Indo-Aryan. This means that the newcomers established
contacts with the elite of several adjacent tribes and a part of the priests
turned to their side and joined the new nobility (as we have seen, this process
began already in North Bactria).
In the Brāhmanas the number of loan-words from the Dravidian and Munda
languages increases, and there are new borrowed lexical fields: not only the
names of flora and fauna unknown to the Aryans, but also the words of economy
and everyday life.
This reflects the fact that the Aryans came into closer contact with ordinary
people of the landcraftsmen and farmers. This is the time when it becomes
legitimate to speak of the formation of a new culturethe culture of the people
of India, that formed as a result of an organic synthesis of the strange culture of
the Aryans mostly revealed in the language, and the aboriginal culture that
preserved the ancient Harappan traditions.
As G. Possehl (2002) has shown, the way of life essentially changed in India
in this period: small villages, the centers of agriculture and handcrafts that
became much degraded, replaced populous cities. Harappan writing, costly
jewels and seals disappeared, international trade stopped, but the old methods of
economy, tools, domestic animals, the traditions of house-building, the types of
means of transportation and, most importantly, the tradition of ceramic production
on a potters wheel were preserved. So the opinion of the Indian scholars
who emphasize the conservation of the Harappan traditions in the culture of the
subsequent periods is quite correct.
The Aryan contribution was the spread of horse and chariot, which is recorded
in the petroglyphs of India and the burial rite: the prevalence of cremation
with the existence of inhumation, the rite of sati, sacrifices of horses and
essentially new mythological beliefs and a social structure close to that of other
Indo-European peoples.
The second stage of the migration of pastoral tribes south was in the 16th
14th centuries BC. People from the mixed Timber-grave-Alakul zone occupied
new territories and formed the original farming culture of Tazabagyab. The sites
of the Andronovan tribes are recorded across Central Asia. In the Tashkent and
Samarkand oases the Timber-grave population appears and comes into contact
with the Andronovans.
The Fedorovan tribes reached the Amu-Darya, took part in the formation of
the Tulkhar culture and actively interacted with the bearers of the farming
Bactria-Margiana culture.
Cultural contacts among the groups of the steppe population can be defined
as the integration of the bearers of related languages or dialects.
Interaction between farmers and stock-breeders was very diverse and
followed very different patterns (see part II). South Tadzhikistan and Uzbekistan
illustrate different patterns of contact: cultural influence: the conservation of
culture with the change of burial rite (the Tadzhik variant of the Andronovo
Fedorovo culture); integration: the formation of the new culture of Bishkent as a
result of the synthesis of the Andronovo Fedorovo culture and BMAC; elite
dominance migration and then integration: the penetration of the Andronovo
population in the BMAC and the probable subjugation of the indigenous
population, primarily in the ideological sphere. This pattern is of great interest; it
is displayed in the materials of the cemetery and especially the temple of
Dzharkutan.
These facts could be interpreted as a gradual aryanization of the
population of south Central Asia and the peaceful spread of the Indo-Aryan and
the Dardic-Nuristani languages in this region. If this model is correct, it agrees
well with the hypothesis of Th. Burrow (1973) that the Indo-Aryans first settled
in Central Asia and then migrated to India from there; the Iranians followed
them, which explains why the Iranian languages lack loan-words so numerous in
Sanskrit. The movement south to Afghanistan and India of the cultures that were
combinations (in different proportions) of Andronovan Fedorovan and BMAC
traits demonstrated the Kulturkugel model of Aryan migration suggested by J.
Mallory (1998).
The 13th9th(8th) centuries BC was the period of the third stage of
migration. It was caused by the cultural transformation of the Eurasian steppes as
a result of internal development and ecological crises.
At that time the new cultural and economic type was becoming firmly
established: the mobile (yayla-type) stock breeding which implied the emergence
of riding. Migrations became more active: a part of the Timber-grave tribes
moved to the North Caucasus because of the crisis; they had already begun
appearing and settling in the Caucasus at an earlier time and adopted some
features of the material culture of the highlanders. M. N. Pogrebova (1977)
connects the migration of the descendants of the Timber-grave population from
the Caucasus to Iran with the appearance of West Iranians in Iran. Another way
might have lain through Central Asia.
This was an elite dominance migration with the subsequent adoption of
the aboriginal culture by the newcomers and of the Iranian language by
the indigenous population. Having come to Iran, the
West Iranians borrowed local grey-black ceramics and contributed to its wide
dissemination, as well as of the Western-Iranian language, for they roamed a lot
in the region. The Fedorovans moved to Central Asia and their territory in south
Siberia was occupied by the bearers of the Karasuk culture.
The other part of the Timber-grave population came to the Urals region and
moved to Central Asia along the Caspian Sea. The activation of cultural
connections, the mobility of population led to a considerable unification of
culture, which is graphically demonstrated by the emergence of a common type
of ceramics with applied roller. The departure of the Fedorovans and the
interaction of Timber-grave and Alakul tribes who were closely related not only
in their culture but also in their anthropology, especially in the contact zone of
the Urals, led to the replacement of the diversity of many individual variants that
existed in the High Bronze Age by the cultural uniformity of vast steppe
territories in the Final Bronze Age. This may have been connected with the
formation and the spread over the whole steppe zone of the proto-Eastern-Iranian
language.
