were just beginning to serve as status symbols. In the same Sintashta graves,
however, that yielded horse sacrifices, cheekpieces, and some of the earliest
spoke-wheeled carts, archaeologists found many and various weapons and even
what seem to be panels of armor.^148 Arrowheads were stone, but the hand-to-hand
weapons were made of arsenical bronze (tin bronze was not yet produced in the
southern Urals).
If the Russian archaeologists have correctly identified the panels of bone as
“armour parts,” to be sewn on a leather or cloth corselet, the panels would be the
clearest evidence for battle and for a warrior class.
The presence of spoke-wheeled carts and of a warlike society may not be a
coincidence. Philip Kohl believes that not all of the “chariots” at Sintashta would
have been too small for use in battle:
The larger ones could have accommodated both driver and warrior, but the
quarters still would have been somewhat cramped. The abundance of arrow -
heads found in the graves at Sintashta suggests the increased importance of
archery at this time. Individuals or materials could be transported quickly over
longer distances using such carts/‘chariots,’ and their ownership and use
probably conveyed social prestige. Certainly, the numerous weapons (Figs.
4.15 and 4.16), such as socketed spearheads, axes with secondary blades
on projecting butts, tanged knives, stone mace heads, flint and bronze arrow -
heads, and longer projectile, possibly javelin, points (4–10 cm. in length)
are eminently functional, not just prestige ceremonial items, and imply
increased militarism, a trend that continues throughout the Late Bronze Age
into the Iron Age and is not only characteristic of the steppes, but also of the
Near East.^149The weapons normally used on the steppe to kill an opponent in hand-to-hand
battle were the spear and the shaft-hole axe. The axes carried at Sintashta ca. 2000
BCwere not much different in design from those carried in the Carpathian basin
three or four centuries later. The presence of socketed spearheads at Sintashta is
also worth noting because they were everywhere still a novelty at this time, and
west of the Carpathians metal spearheads of any kind were not yet in use.
Although self bows may have been commonly used on the steppe, archaeologists
have detected the presence of composite bows at Sintashta and nearby sites. Of
the forty-six graves excavated at the Kamennyi Ambar settlement, eight had bone
or horn strips that are believed to have come from composite bows (the graves
also yielded 237 arrowheads).^150 That composite bows may have been known in
the southern Urals at this time is not surprising, since they had been known in the
Near East through most if not all of the third millennium BC. There and then,
however, they had been reserved for the privileged (the wooden figurines in the
Tomb of Mesehti all carry self bows). What is surprising at Kamennyi Ambar is
that one man out of every six seems to have owned a composite bow. We have
reason to think that already ca. 2000 BCthe “chariots” at Sintashta were used both
in hunting and in combat.
88 Warfare in Western Eurasia