Bulls and Wagons: an “innovative” approach to representing archaeological data

Abstract

The recently published book on appropriating innovations in prehistoric Eurasia includes in it a chapter entitled “Contextualising Innovation: Cattle Owners and Wagon Drivers in the North Caucasus and Beyond” by a group of authors (Reinhold et al. 2017). The task of analyzing this article is beyond standard academic review because works the level on which this article is written are generally not included in a bibliography, pretending they do not exist. However, this book is issued by a respectable publisher, and the article can be used as a source by scholars and students, reproducing and disseminating the erroneous facts and unsupported statements, adding to other misinformation about steppe prehistory roaming through Western-language publications.

Keywords

• Early-Middle Bronze Age
• Maikop culture
• Yamnaya culture
• wooden wagons
• North Caucasus
• professional incompetency