Economy and society in the Eurasian steppe changed quite suddenly ca. 2000
BC. At the beginning of the KMK (or Multi-roller pottery culture), which has been
found especially along the Dnieper and the Don river systems, at least 200
settlements were built where previously there had been very few.^151 The same was
true in the Srubna (Timber Grave) archaeological culture east of the Don, as many
pastoralists seem to have abandoned nomadism, choosing instead to live in
settlements along the major rivers and their tributaries. Most of these little
settlements lay in the forest steppe, but some were built in the grassland steppe.^152
The nomadic pastoralism characteristic of the Yamna period of course continued
through the Srubna period, but for every known settlement of the earlier culture
archaeologists have identified at least ten from the Srubna culture.^153 The
pastoralists do not seem to have settled down in order to become farmers, because
the material record indicates that agriculture was of little importance in the KMK
and Srubna settlements. As I suggested in Chapter 2, it is possible that chariots
made nomadic pastoralism less profitable, and more dangerous, than it had once
been. Chariot-borne rustlers and raiders, that is, may have begun to drive off flocks
and herds from the open steppe. This surmise must rely entirely on circumstantial
evidence. In much of the steppe sedantarization occurred very soon after the
invention of the chariot, and the weapons (including composite bows) associated
with the chariot burials at Sintashta show at least that the owners of the vehicles
were well equipped to engage in raids and razzias.
Warfare in southern Caucasia, to 1700 BC
People in the highlands to the south of the Caucasus mountains, a region long
known to Russians as Transcaucasia, seem also to have had considerable
acquaintance with warfare early in the second millennium BC. In the lowlands of
western Georgia (“Colchis”) this may not have been the case. Small settlements
of the period have been found here. These settlements, usually including only a
handful of houses, had no fortifications other than the moats that surrounded them
and that were probably dug for drainage purposes (the region, as already remarked,
receives much more rainfall than it needs).^154 Things were quite different in the
higher and drier elevations near and east of the Likhi range. The highlands include
the mountainous region of Trialeti, which gives its name to the area’s Middle
Bronze II culture, which is now dated to ca. 2100–1700 BC.^155 Although known
settlements here are far fewer than those from the preceding Kura-Araxes culture,
the few that have been found are larger than their contemporaries in western
Georgia. Like their Kura-Araxes predecessors, the Trialeti settlements lay along
the Kura and Araxes rivers and their tributaries. Karine Kushnareva called attention
to the “defensive systems” found at a number of them.^156 At several sites the
fortifications were massive (cyclopean) stone walls and it has been argued that
the earliest of them belong within our period, but that seems unlikely.^157
Most of our information about the Trialeti culture—populated mostly by
nomadic pastoralists, and similar to the Srubna culture north of the Caucasus—
comes from the burials. Here the grave goods found in kurgans included flint and
Warfare in Western Eurasia 89