Yamnaya culture

A Late Copper Age and Early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the Pontic–Caspian steppe, associated with burial mounds and mobile pastoralism.

Pontic–Caspian steppe: A broad grassland region north of the Black and Caspian seas, stretching from southeastern Europe into Central Asia. This was the landscape across which Yamnaya communities moved and herded animals.
Yamnaya burial: A funerary practice involving an individual placed in a pit, often beneath a mound and commonly in a flexed position. These graves supply much of the evidence used to identify Yamnaya communities.
Khvalynsk culture: A Copper Age archaeological culture of the middle Volga region, dating mainly to the fifth millennium BCE. Khvalynsk communities preceded the Yamnaya and contributed to the region's developing burial traditions.
Marija Gimbutas: A Lithuanian-American archaeologist known for proposing the Kurgan hypothesis of Indo-European origins. Her interpretation made steppe burial mounds central to debates about Yamnaya-era expansions.
Steppe ancestry: A genetic component associated with prehistoric populations of the Eurasian steppe, identified in later ancient and present-day groups. Its spread tracks population movements linked to Yamnaya and related steppe communities.
Kurgan: A burial mound built over one or more graves, especially in the Eurasian steppe. Yamnaya graves were often covered by earthen mounds, a defining feature of their archaeological record.
Ancient DNA: Genetic material recovered from archaeological remains and analyzed to study past populations. Ancient genomes have clarified Yamnaya ancestry and the scale of later movements from the steppe.
Sredny Stog culture: A Copper Age archaeological culture of the northern Pontic region, preceding the Yamnaya horizon. It provides an important local antecedent for Yamnaya lifeways and material traditions.
David W. Anthony: An American archaeologist whose research examines horse domestication, steppe mobility, and Indo-European origins. His work synthesizes archaeological evidence for Yamnaya lifeways and migrations.
Indo-European migrations: Prehistoric movements proposed to have spread Indo-European languages from ancestral regions into Europe and Asia. Yamnaya-related migrations are a leading archaeological model for part of this process.

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