able to employ expert Cretan craftsmen. Not particularly relevant to my argument,
but of some antiquarian interest, is that still in the Late Bronze Age southern
Caucasian metalworkers perfected a method of hollow casting, which allowed them
to produce a “chariot rattle”: a hollow figurine enclosing a few loose bronze
pellets.^24 As the horses ran, the figurine affixed to the chariot pole must have rattled
like the bells on the harness straps of sleigh horses.
Penner’s three diagnostic artifacts are not entirely lacking in southern Caucasia
(and the Totenritualthere also had parallels to Mycenaean Greece). Although
Wellenbanddecoration was not common in southern Caucasia, it was not
unknown: on a pot found in Kurgan 12 at Verin Naver, dating to the Middle Bronze
Age, the main register is covered with a Wellenband.^25 It must nevertheless be
conceded that the prominence of the Wellenbandin Mycenaean Greece is unlikely
to have been due to newcomers from southern Caucasia. A much more likely
explanation for that prominence would be extensive Mycenaean contact with the
Carpathian basin, where the motif was wildly popular.
As we have seen, the forged bronze spearhead, or the spearhead with a slit sleeve,
is well attested in Middle Bronze contexts in southern Caucasia. Some specimens
from that region have an even closer resemblance to Aegean spearheads than
do any of those from the Sintashta culture: the Trialeti spearhead with close
Mycenaean counterparts at Ialysos and Prosymna has been noted above. Penner’s
222 The question of origins
Figure 7.2Bronze chariot ornament found at Lori Berd, in Armenia. From Pogrebova
2003, Figure 3. Courtesy John Wiley & Sons, and Blackwell Publishing Ltd