The Ideology Of The Ninth And Tenth Centuries 35
newcomers and their respective areas of previous habitation, as well as the
process of their natural assimilation.70
Significant changes in the Dzhetyasar culture appear only after the fifth to
sixth centuries. They are associated with the influx of Turkic-speaking tribes.
It was then that the gradual Turkicization of the Dzhetyasarians began; it
increased after the eighth century and is seen as a consequence of the Pecheneg
union influence. Constantine Porphyrogenitus states that the three most emi-
nent tribes among the Pechenegs that migrated to Europe in the ninth cen-
tury were called Kangar. It is presumed that this ethnonym appeared in the
fifth century (because of the mention of Kangar south of the Caucasus at that
time) and is a result of the Turkicization of the local Dzhetyasar population,
which the Pecheneg tribal union was based upon. The last phase of this culture
is associated precisely with the Pechenegs and the Oghuz that came in their
place in the ninth century.71
The Dzhetyasarians also migrated to various regions in Asia and Europe.
They usually resettled to the west, in the direction of the North Caucasus and
the Volga Region (the third and fourth, sixth to seventh and the eighth centu-
ries) and south along the mainstream of the Syr Darya towards Ferghana and
the Bukhara area (the third to fourth and sixth to seventh centuries). The pres-
ence of the Dzhetyasarians in various parts of Europe and Asia is evidenced
by the specific ceramics, building traditions and burial rites that they brought
with them. Hence, it is believed that a Dzhetyasar influence can be observed
in the Saltovo culture, as well as in the Bakhmutino culture (the third to sev-
enth centuries) of the Ugrian population in the Volga Region. The emergence
of the Kerder culture in Khwarezm during the eighth century is also a result
of a Dzhetyasar migration. As it will be shown later on in the book, Khwarezm
was closely related to Khazaria, especially during the ninth to tenth centuries.
As an anthropological type, the Dzhetyasarians belonged to three
Caucasoid types with a Mongoloid admixture: the Pamir-Ferghana type (of
Transoxiana), the East-Mediterranean one and the Near Eastern (Khorasani)
type. Traditionally, the male population of the Dzhetyasar culture was anthro-
pologically close to the Sauromatians and the Sarmatians from the Ural area,
as well as to the population of the Tuva region and the Tagar culture. The
70 Vainberg 1990, 120, 188, 193, and 279; Levina 1996, 195–196, 241, 247–248, and 373–374;
Levina 1968, 178; Levina 1981, 171–173; Levina 1998, 53–55.
71 Andrialov and Levina 1979, 96–98; Levina 1998, 55 and 1996, 374; Vainberg 1990, 100–101,
185, 188, 283–285, and 293; Kliashtornyi 1964, 175–177; Pritsak, 1981b, no. 10, 6–8; Spinei
2003, 94, 113, and 178–179.