A Review of Literature on the Formation of Livestock Farming in the West Siberian Forest-Steppe Zone in the Late Bronze Age

Abstract

The article deals with the history of development of livestock farming among the Irmen people in the Late Bronze Age. The authors’ analysis of a number of research works revealed that Irmen population had a pastoral type of economy with cattle prevailing in the livestock and a smaller proportion of horses and sheep. In addition, it was revealed that the main trend in the pastoral farming development was the formation of distant-pasture cattle rearing. The review of scientific studies showed that the Irmen people of the forest-steppe part of West Siberia had both summer and winter settlements and practiced winter cattle housing. Cattle grazing was conducted within floodplain valleys of large rivers, as well as on remote pasture fields. The conclusions about the use of horses primarily as riding and draft animals, as well as those about their specific ritual role in the Late Bronze Age are rather essential. A conclusion was drawn about individualization of horses’ burials in funeral complexes and connection between burials of horse skulls and certain buried subjects. As a rule, those are cases of men who acted as community leaders. Burials of such men usually marked a series of mounds within Irmen barrows. The rise of the tradition in the Irmen culture is explained in terms of the gradual increase of horses’ role in the economy of southern West Siberia. A hypothesis was also drawn according to which orientation of horse skulls to the northeast or southwest symbolized the rising of the sun in the northeast during the summer solstice and its setting in the southwest during the winter solstice. And the number of horse skulls in Irmen burial mounds symbolizes the number of months during which the sunrise and sunset points make significant shifts to the northeast and southwest respectively. Thus, horse skulls turned to the northeast symbolize the spring and summer months that “carry” the sun towards warmth and increasing daylight. The skulls turned the southwest, on the opposite, “carry” the fading sun towards the cold of winter. The mythological and calendar symbolism stems from the traditions of the early Andronovo sepulchral complexes with their southwestern orientation of buried horses (imitating a yoke) and those of Andronovo burials with the southwestern orientation of human remains. It was understood that the steady tradition of horse burials took shape in the livestock-raising communities of the steppe and forest-steppe zones of Eurasia. In terms of archaeology, the sources of the tradition are well fixed in Bronze Age artifacts and found interpretation in Indo-European rituals. The privileged position of the horse found its archaeological reflection in Irmen house-building, burial and commemorative rituals. The location analysis of animal bone remains within the sacral space of Irmen burial mounds has shown that heads (skulls) and skins of horses had been used by the Irmen people most frequently during burial and subsequent commemorative ceremonies of the funeral cycle.

Keywords

• livestock farming
• economic and cultural type
• settlements
• late bronze age