David W. Anthony | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
Academic work | |
Discipline | |
Sub-discipline | Indo-European studies |
Institutions | |
Main interests | Indo-European migrations |
Notable works | |
Notable ideas | Kurgan hypothesis |
David W. Anthony is an American anthropologist who is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Hartwick College. He specializes in Indo-European migrations,and is a proponent of the Kurgan hypothesis. Anthony is well known for his award-winning book The Horse,the Wheel,and Language (2007).
Anthony received a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. [1]
Anthony has been a Professor of Anthropology at Hartwick College since 1987. [1] [2] While at Hartwick,he was also the curator of Anthropology for the Yager Museum of Art &Culture on the campus of Hartwick College in Oneonta,New York. According to Princeton University Press,"he has conducted extensive archaeological fieldwork in Ukraine,Russia,and Kazakhstan." [3] Anthony has been Archaeology Editor of the Journal of Indo-European Studies. [4]
One of his areas of research has been the domestication of the horse. [5] In 2019,his work was featured in an episode of Nova that discussed the theories of how this process occurred. [6]
According to the uncurated ResearchGate website,Anthony has published at least 54 research articles. [2]
The books of Anthony include:
Anthony has appeared as a relator of history in works such as:
The Proto-Indo-Europeans are a hypothetical prehistoric ethnolinguistic group of Eurasia who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE),the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family.
A chariot is a type of cart driven by a charioteer,usually using horses to provide rapid motive power. The oldest known chariots have been found in burials of the Sintashta culture in modern-day Chelyabinsk Oblast,Russia,dated to c. 1950–1880 BCE and are depicted on cylinder seals from Central Anatolia in Kültepe dated to c. 1900 BCE. The critical invention that allowed the construction of light,horse-drawn chariots was the spoked wheel.
How and when horses became domesticated has been disputed. Although horses appeared in Paleolithic cave art as early as 30,000 BC,these were wild horses and were probably hunted for meat. The clearest evidence of early use of the horse as a means of transport is from chariot burials dated c. 2000 BC. However,an increasing amount of evidence began to support the hypothesis that horses were domesticated in the Eurasian Steppes in approximately 3500 BC. Discoveries in the context of the Botai culture had suggested that Botai settlements in the Akmola Province of Kazakhstan are the location of the earliest domestication of the horse. Warmouth et al. (2012) pointed to horses having been domesticated around 3000 BC in what is now Ukraine and Western Kazakhstan.
Old Europe is a term coined by the Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas to describe what she perceived as a relatively homogeneous pre-Indo-European Neolithic and Copper Age culture or civilisation in Southeast Europe,centred in the Lower Danube Valley. Old Europe is also referred to in some literature as the Danube civilisation.
Proto-Indo-European society is the reconstructed culture of Proto-Indo-Europeans,the ancient speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language,ancestor of all modern Indo-European languages.
The Kurgan hypothesis is the most widely accepted proposal to identify the Proto-Indo-European homeland from which the Indo-European languages spread out throughout Europe and parts of Asia. It postulates that the people of a Kurgan culture in the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). The term is derived from the Turkic word kurgan (курга́н),meaning tumulus or burial mound.
The Yamnaya culture or the Yamna culture,also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture,is a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age archaeological culture of the region between the Southern Bug,Dniester,and Ural rivers,dating to 3300–2600 BCE. It was discovered by Vasily Gorodtsov following his archaeological excavations near the Donets River in 1901–1903. Its name derives from its characteristic burial tradition:Я́мнаяis a Russian adjective that means 'related to pits ',as these people used to bury their dead in tumuli (kurgans) containing simple pit chambers. Research in recent years has found that Mikhaylovka,in lower Dnieper river,Ukraine,formed the Core Yamnaya culture.
The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Late Bronze Age cultures that flourished c. 2000–1150 BC,spanning from the southern Urals to the upper Yenisei River in central Siberia. Some researchers have preferred to term it an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon. The slightly older Sintashta culture,formerly included within the Andronovo culture,is now considered separately to Early Andronovo cultures. Andronovo culture's first stage could have begun at the end of the 3rd millennium BC,with cattle grazing,as natural fodder was by no means difficult to find in the pastures close to dwellings.
The Khvalynsk culture is a Middle Copper Age Eneolithic culture of the middle Volga region. It takes its name from Khvalynsk in Saratov Oblast. The Khvalynsk culture is found from the Samara Bend in the north to the North Caucasus in the south,from the Sea of Azov in the west to the Ural River in the east. It was preceded by the Early Eneolithic Samara culture.
The Samara culture is an Eneolithic culture dating to the turn of the 5th millennium BCE,at the Samara Bend of the Volga River. The Samara culture is regarded as related to contemporaneous or subsequent prehistoric cultures of the Pontic–Caspian steppe,such as the Khvalynsk,Repin and Yamna cultures.
Potapovka culture was a Bronze Age culture which flourished on the middle Volga in 2100—1800 BC.
The Abashevo culture is a late Middle Bronze Age archaeological culture,ca. 2200–1850 BC,found in the valleys of the middle Volga and Kama River north of the Samara bend and into the southern Ural Mountains. It receives its name from the village of Abashevo in Chuvashia.
The Afanasievo culture,or Afanasevo culture,is an early archaeological culture of south Siberia,occupying the Minusinsk Basin and the Altai Mountains during the eneolithic era,c. 3300 to 2500 BCE. It is named after a nearby mountain,Gora Afanasieva in what is now Bogradsky District,Khakassia,Russia,first excavated by archaeologist Sergei Teploukhov in 1920-1929. Afanasievo burials have been found as far as Shatar Chuluu in central Mongolia,confirming a further expansion about 1,500 km beyond the Altai Mountains. The Afanasievo culture is now considered as an integral part of the Prehistory of Western and Central Mongolia.
The Cernavodăculture,ca. 4000–3200,is a late Copper Age archaeological culture distributed along the lower Eastern Bug River and Danube and along the coast of the Black Sea and somewhat inland,generally in present-day Bulgaria and Romania. It is named after the Romanian town of Cernavodă.
The Anatolian hypothesis,also known as the Anatolian theory or the sedentary farmer theory,first developed by British archaeologist Colin Renfrew in 1987,proposes that the dispersal of Proto-Indo-Europeans originated in Neolithic Anatolia. It is the main competitor to the Kurgan hypothesis,or steppe theory,which enjoys more academic favor.
The Bug–Dniester culture was an archaeological culture that developed in and around the Central Black Earth Region of Moldavia and Ukraine,around the Dniester and Southern Bug rivers,during the Neolithic era.
The Proto-Indo-European homeland was the prehistoric linguistic homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). From this region,its speakers migrated east and west,and went on to form the proto-communities of the different branches of the Indo-European language family.
The Horse,the Wheel,and Language:How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World is a 2007 book by the anthropologist David W. Anthony,in which the author describes his "revised Kurgan theory." He explores the origins and spread of the Indo-European languages from the Pontic–Caspian steppe throughout Western Europe,Central Asia,and South Asia. He shows how the domesticated horse and the invention of the wheel mobilized the steppe herding societies in the Eurasian Steppe,and combined with the introduction of bronze technology and new social structures of patron-client relationships gave an advantage to the Indo-European societies. The book won the Society for American Archaeology's 2010 Book Award.
The Sintashta culture is a Middle Bronze Age archaeological culture of the Southern Urals,dated to the period c. 2200–1900 BCE. It is the first phase of the Sintashta–Petrovka complex,c. 2200–1750 BCE. The culture is named after the Sintashta archaeological site,in Chelyabinsk Oblast,Russia,and spreads through Orenburg Oblast,Bashkortostan,and Northern Kazakhstan. Widely regarded as the origin of the Indo-Iranian languages,whose speakers originally referred to themselves as the Aryans, the Sintashta culture is thought to represent an eastward migration of peoples from the Corded Ware culture.
The Indo-European migrations are hypothesized migrations of Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) speakers,and subsequent migrations of people speaking derived Indo-European languages,which took place approx. 4000 to 1000 BCE,potentially explaining how these languages came to be spoken across a large area of Eurasia,spanning from the Indian subcontinent and Iranian plateau to Atlantic Europe,in a process of cultural diffusion.