Yamnaya culture

Also known as Pit Grave, Pit Grave culture, Yamnaya Horizon, Yamna culture, Ochre Grave culture

archaeological culture

Key facts

Alternative names: Pit Grave culture Yamna culture Ochre Grave culture Yamnaya Horizon
Geographical range: Pontic–Caspian steppe in Europe
Period: Copper Age , Bronze Age
Dates: c. 3300 –2600 BC
Preceded by: Sredny Stog culture , Samara culture , Khvalynsk culture , Dnieper–Donets culture , Repin culture , Maykop culture , Cucuteni–Trypillia culture , Cernavodă culture , Usatove culture , Novosvobodnaya culture , Mykhailivka culture (3600–3000 BCE)
Followed by: North: Corded Ware culture West: Catacomb culture , Vučedol culture East: Poltavka culture
Defined by: Vasily Gorodtsov

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Image: Yamnaya culture.jpg

Sources (1)

wikidata.org

Article

The Yamnaya (/ˈjæmnaɪə/ YAM-ny-ə), or Yamna (/ˈjæmnə/ YAM-nə), culture, also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture, is a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester, and Ural rivers (the Pontic–Caspian steppe), dating to 3300–2600 BC. It was discovered by Vasily Gorodtsov following his archaeological excavations near the Donets River in 1901–1903. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition: yamnaya (ямная) is a Russian adjective that means 'related to pits' (яма, yama), as these people buried their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers. Research in recent years has found that Mykhailivka, on the lower Dnieper River in Ukraine, formed the core Yamnaya culture (c. 3600–3400 BC).

The Yamnaya culture is of particular interest to archaeologists and linguists, as the widely accepted Kurgan hypothesis posits that the people who produced the Yamnaya culture spoke a stage of the Proto-Indo-European language. The speakers of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language embarked on the Indo-European migrations, which gave rise to today's widely dispersed Indo-European languages.