of the second millennium BCfour parts of Europe were suddenly militarized by
men who had, among other things, horse-drawn chariots.
Notes
1 For a balanced evaluation of her work see Harding 2005.
2 See her summary statement at Penner 1998, pp. 211–212, on a movement “ausgehend
vom Gebiet zwischen oberer Wolga und Ural.”
3 Penner 1998, pp. 213 and 215.
4 At Penner 1998 see pp. 13–22, with Abb. 2, nos. 1–3 from Novo-Jabalakly, and Abb.
3, nos. 1 and 4–10, from the Shaft Graves.
5 Penner 1998, p. 15, with Abb. 5.2.
6 Penner 1998, Tafel 38, with her remarks at p. 123: “Mit den Verzierungen auf den
Scheibenknebeln von Starojur’evo, Kondraškinskij, Pičaevo und Sarata-Monteoru ist
die Wellen- und Schlingbandornamentik schon in der Pokrovsk-Früstufe der Abaševo-
Kultur belegt.” The first three sites mentioned lie along the upper Don and its tributaries.
7 Penner 1998, maps at Tafeln 15–17. In Hüttel 1981 the Trakhtemyriv Scheibenknebel
are nos. 14 and 15.
8 See Priakhin and Besedin 1999, p. 40:
As this article was being prepared, we had information on over sixty finds or
fragments of disk-shaped cheekpieces with spikes from twenty-nine monuments in
Eastern Europe (see Fig. 1). Most are situated in the Don-Volga forest-steppe and
adjacent regions beyond the left bank of the Volga. Relative concentration is not a
reflection of the extent to which various regions have been studied by archaeologists.
On the contrary, the greatest number of finds has been obtained from the relatively
poorly researched regions of the northern Don-Volga forest-steppe.
9 See Smith 2005, p. 231,
Unfortunately, at present the Caucasus is only faintly inscribed in the archaeo -
logical traditions of Europe and the U.S. The tensions of the Cold War certainly
contributed to the marginalization of the region within the archaeology of the
ancient Near East as it developed in the years after World War II.
Smith goes on to say that “... the southern Caucasus is entirely absent from almost
all major Western synthetic discussions of the ancient Near East.”
10 Hand-to-hand weapons in the Late Bronze Age steppe were spears and socketed axes.
See Kohl 2007, p. 170 and his Fig. 4.24. Archaeologists have long been aware of the
paucity of swords in steppe burials. See Childe 1942, p. 134: “Western forms that
affected methods of fighting or costume never caught on; of the types so characteristic
of the Late Bronze Age in Central Europe I know only two or three stray swords, all
from West of the Dnieper.” Professors Carola Metzner-Nebelsick and Anthony Harding
kindly inform me (personal correspondence, July 2, 2016) that subsequent finds of
bronze swords east of the Carpathians have been very few. In the invaluable
Prāhistorische Bronzefundeseries 18 volumes are devoted to swords, but none of them
deals with swords east of the Carpathians.
11 Hiller 1991, p. 213.
12 Rubinson 1991, p. 284.
13 See Hiller 1991, p. 213, having noted the similarity of Type A rapiers in southern
Caucasia and Mycenaean Greece:
The same can be attested to some extraordinary spear heads with angular shoulders
and a fine ridged midrib; they correspond to Aegean specimens of group G in
O. Höckmann’s classification system (cf. Plate LVII, b). As M. Gimbutas has seen
230 The question of origins