required, on reaching the Volga, to have loaded its horses on transports in order
to cross the river. And then, after reaching the right bank of the Volga and travelling
overland to the Don, would have needed a second set of horse-transports to carry
the chariotry down the Don to the Black Sea and to its destination. It is more
economical to imagine that a steppe expedition began west of the Volga, along
the Don or one of its tributaries.
In arguing that a military force from the Volga-Ural forest steppe came to
Greece at the end of the MH period Penner relied on the Totenritualperformed
in both regions (aspects of the construction of the grave, and the selection of grave
goods) and on three artifacts that were attested in both places, appearing first in
the southern Urals and then in the Shaft Graves at Mycenae. These three artifacts
were the organic disk cheekpiece (the Scheibenknebel), the wave ornamentation
(Wellenband) on weapons and other objects, and the forged spearhead with slit
socket. In addition, Penner began her argument with a comparison of the gold
disks from Grave Circle A and the seven bronze disks found in 1973 in Grave 3
of Kurgan 2 at Novo-Jabalakly, in the Republic of Bashkortostan. This site is far
to the northeast of the Caspian, and not far from the southern Urals. The similarities
in decoration of the disks are remarkable, especially the curvilinear swastika or
the “running S.”^4
Penner notes, however, that the same design appears on a disk found at
Solomenka, in the foothills north of the Caucasus and near the headwaters of the
Kuban river.^5 Solomenka is more than 2000 km southwest of Novo-Jabalakly, and
that is a reminder of how dependent our theories are on the vagaries of
archaeological finds. It is possible that the “running S” was in vogue even to the
west of Solomenka, and it is almost certain that it was in vogue at places in the
vast steppe that lay between Novo-Jabalakly and Solomenka. The Wellenband
decoration on cheekpieces has been found in three places: Greece, the Carpathian
basin and the steppe. On the steppe, as Penner shows, as many have been found
along the upper Don as along the upper Volga and Ural.^6
The same is true of the forged, or slit-socketed, spearhead and the Scheiben -
knebel. Although the organic disk cheekpieces that have been found in Greece
and the Carpathian basin are paralleled along the southern Urals, they are also
paralleled—as Penner shows—along the upper Don and even by specimens found
as far to the west as Trakhtemyriv, on the middle Dnieper.^7 A survey slightly more
recent than Penner’s concluded that find-spots of the organic disk cheekpiece are
in fact most numerous in the forest steppe between the Volga and the Don.^8
Penner’s maps also show that forged spearheads have been found not only in the
Sintashta-Petrovka region but also at sites on the upper Don, at one on the lower
Dnieper, and at one on the left bank of the Kuban. On the diagnostic criteria that
Penner uses, the forest steppe between the Don and the Volga has a fairly good
claim to have been the starting point for an expedition bent on taking over the
mines in the Carpathian basin. The preference for cast rather than forged
spearheads in the basin may have been due to the long tradition of bronze casting
in central Europe.
218 The question of origins