Ludmila Koryakova and Andrej Epimakhov, “traces of injuries—broken bones
and skulls pierced with metal weapons and stone arrowheads of the Balanovo
type (see later)—were detected on the bones of a large number of these skele -
tons.”^143 That the dead were all young males must mean that they were not victims
of a massacre or a raid, but casualties in a battle. That their bodies were collected
and honored with a burial under a kurgan suggests that their comrades may
ultimately have been victorious in the battle, and that the community to which
they belonged—perhaps a chiefdom—included several hundred men. In the
Pepkino battle bows and arrows were obviously important. The main hand-to-
hand weapon may have been an axe, but this battle occurred early (ca. 2200 BC)
in the Abashevo period. Later in the Abashevo culture, at settlements and in graves
of the early second millennium BC, socketed spearheads were found along with
an array of other weapons. Anthony’s generalization is worth noting: “Intense
warfare, perhaps on a surprising scale, was part of the political landscape during
the late Abashevo era.”^144
Some indirect evidence for warfare in the steppe, dating early in the second
millennium BC, may have recently come from the Timber Grave (Srubna, or
Srubnaya) archaeological culture, to the west of the Urals and south of the
Abashevo culture. David Anthony and Dorcas Brown excavated a tiny Srubna
settlement at Krasnosamarskoe, on the Samara river close to its inflow into the
Volga. In a deep kitchen midden within the largest of the settlement’s three
structures were thousands of animal bones.^145 Not surprisingly, many of the bones
came from cattle and ovicaprids, but what greatly surprised Anthony and Brown
was that no less than 40 percent of the bones came from dogs (in the typical Srubna
settlement dogs account for no more than 2 percent of the bones). The dogs were
apparently sacrificed, butchered and probably eaten in a ritual that came round
every year in midwinter.^146 Anthony and Brown suggest that the large structure
served for gatherings of people from many villages roundabout, and that the
sacrifice of dogs was part of a ritual at which adolescent boys were initiated into
manhood. The archaeologists reconstruct such a ritual on the basis of the
Lupercalia of the early Romans and of several other rituals attested in Indo-
European societies. Recalling the krypteiaof the Spartans, the Männerbündeof
Germanic societies, and the Vrâtyasof the Rig Veda, Anthony and Brown propose
that the purpose of the ritual at Krasnosamarskoe “was to initiate young men into
the warrior category.”^147
Apparently the Sintashta culture in the “Country of Towns,” just to the east of
the southern Urals, was also familiar with warfare. Archaeologists have found
twenty small towns (or large villages) here, most publicized of which is Arkaim
in the Chelyabinsk Oblast. Each of the towns was completely encircled by
a fortification of mounded earth and a timber palisade. While a far cry from
fortifications in the Near East, the mounds and palisades would nevertheless have
offered at least temporary protection and they suggest that the men of the town
expected that they would have to defend it. This is also implied by the weapons
found in cemeteries. Neither here nor elsewhere on the steppe have rapiers been
found in early second-millennium contexts, but that is not surprising because they
86 Warfare in Western Eurasia