Table Of ContentWolf
Rites of
Winter
Archaeologists digging a Bronze Age site on the
Russian steppes are using evidence from language and
mythology to understand a remarkable discovery
by Eric A. Powell
A
round 4,000 years ago, Nerissa Russell, the project’s archaeozoolo-
on the steppes north of the gist, says, “I remember saying early on in the
Black Sea, a nomadic people dig that we were finding a lot of dog bones. But
began settling down in small I had no idea how important they would turn
communities. Known today out to be.” When the team got to work analyz-
as the Timber Grave Cul- ing all the animal bones in the lab, they identi-
ture, these people left behind more than 1,000 fied the remains of about 51 dogs and seven
sites. One of them is called Krasnosamarskoe, wolves, as well as six canines that could not
and Hartwick College archaeologist David be classified as either. At other Timber Grave
Anthony had big expectations for it when he sites, dog and wolf bones never make up more
started digging there in the late 1990s. Antho- than 3 percent of the total animal bones found.
ny hoped that by excavating the site he might At Krasnosamarskoe, they made up more than
learn why people in this region first began to 30 percent. “I don’t know of any other site in
establish permanent households. But he and the world with such a high percentage of dog
his team have since discovered that Krasnosa- bones,” says Russell. She and her team found
marskoe has a much different story to tell. that most of the dogs were unusually long-
They found that the site held the remains of lived, up to 12 years old in some cases, which
dozens of butchered dogs and wolves—vastly meant they were probably not raised for food.
more than at any comparable site. “Were they treasured pets, hunting dogs, or
www.archaeology.org 33
guages including English, and many ing with his nephew, whom he is training to become a warrior. warriors during a mid-winter ritual that involved dog sacrifice.
spoken in Asia, such as Hindi. All In the Rigveda, an ancient Sanskrit text composed sometime Linguists even reconstructed the PIE word for these warrior
these languages are “daughters” of before 1000 b.c., young men can only become warriors after bands: koryos. But, as with many reconstructed PIE words and
one language, which was probably sacrificing a dog at a winter ceremony and wearing its skin for ideas, physical proof that koryos actually roamed the Eurasian
spoken on the Eurasian steppes four years, which they burn upon their return to society. steppes thousands of years ago had been lacking. Anthony and
between 4500 and 2500 b.c. His- The institution of youthful war bands that go on seasonal Brown, however, because of the sheer number of dog and wolf
torical linguists call it Proto-Indo- raids is so widespread in Indo-European cultures that histori- bones at the site, strongly suspected Krasnosamarskoe might
European (PIE). By comparing cal linguists and mythologists concluded that it had to be a indeed be a site of one of these midwinter koryos initiations.
words across all the ancient and long-standing PIE tradition, and that these young men became But they needed to prove that this reconstructed tradition
modern Indo-European languages, existed 4,000 years ago.
they have been able to reconstruct Once they sent the canine teeth from the site to archaeozo-
A bronze Viking plate from the 6th century a.d. depicts a
a great deal of the lexicon of this ologist Anne Pike-Tay, who studies incremental growth bands
helmeted figure who may be the god Odin dancing with a
long-dead language. Not only have warrior wearing a wolf mask. on teeth to determine what season an animal died in, the final
they reconstructed—and traced piece of the puzzle fell into place. She was able to determine the
across these ancient Indo-Europe- season of death for 17 of the canines and found that 16 of them
an cultures—terms as varied as the were killed in the wintertime. Cows sacrificed at the site, by
words for bee, wheel, and snore, contrast, were killed year-round. For Anthony and Brown, this
but linguists can also make infer- was a powerful piece of evidence that koryos existed hundreds
ences about these cultures from of years before they were first mentioned in the Rigveda.
this vocabulary.
J
Despite the rich picture of ust as roving bands of youthful raiders played an impor-
ancient life that can be drawn of ancient life in this way, many tant role in later Indo-European societies, Anthony thinks
archaeologists are hesitant to trust reconstructed PIE word roots they would have been critical to the Timber Grave people.
and concepts. “This is the kind of information that prehistoric “It was an organized way of not just controlling potentially
archaeologists would normally kill to have,” says Anthony, “but dangerous young men,” he says, “but it was a way of expanding
they generally distance themselves from Indo-European linguis- and gaining wealth.” Indeed, Anthony thinks koryos could
tics because they can’t really see how the two sets of data can help explain why Indo-European languages spread so success-
be combined.” Anthony has spent much of his career trying to fully. Previous generations of scholars imagined hordes of
convince his colleagues that the efforts of linguists and mytholo- Indo-Europeans on chariots spreading their languages across
Archaeologists found chopped dog and wolf bones gists shouldn’t be ignored. “I’m interested in combining linguistic Europe and Asia by the point of the sword. But Anthony
(top) scattered at the small Bronze Age settlement of and mythological evidence with archaeological evidence,” he says. thinks Indo-European spread instead by way of widespread
Krasnosamarskoe. Three pieces of dog skull from the site
“These roots contain information about kinship, systems of honor, imitation of Indo-European customs, which included, for
(above) were cut into small, standardized pieces that may
systems of debt, lordship, and feasting. We ought to be mining
have had ritual significance.
this vocabulary to figure out what was going on in their minds.”
So, without consulting these linguistic sources, many
pariahs? We don’t know,” she says. “But they are so old that archaeologists would have been satisfied simply knowing the
these were dogs that had been around for a while and had some dogs were sacrificed. But Brown and Anthony’s passion for
kind of relationship to these people.” bringing linguistic evidence to bear on archaeological discover-
To add to the mystery, the bones were cut in unusual, ies made them go deeper. “I think it’s lucky that we were the
systematic ways that did not resemble ordinary butchering ones who excavated the site,” says Anthony.
practices. Snouts were divided into three pieces and the
B
remainder of the skulls were broken down into geometrically rown continued to search the literature on Indo-
shaped fragments only an inch long. No one would have made European ceremonies for information on dogs that might
these cuts to simply get meat off the bones. yield clues about what kind of ritual was being practiced
Anthony and his wife, archaeologist Dora Brown, knew at the site. She found that historical linguists and mythologists
it was a unique discovery. Brown, in particular, suspected the have long linked dog sacrifice to an important ancient Indo-
canines were probably sacrificed there as part of a ritual and European tradition, the roving youthful war band.
decided to examine the research literature broadly on the In the ancient Celtic, Germanic, Greek, and Indo-Iranian
subject of rituals involving dogs. What she discovered was that traditions, young men often left their families to form war-
there was indeed a body of work on just such ancient practices. rior societies. “These were young guys on the edge of society Enigmatic stelae dating from about 1300 to
In an unusual move for prehistoric archaeologists, they decided who occasionally would steal cows, and you’d rather they 1000 b.c. were found in a tomb near Kivik,
Sweden. One (second from left) may depict a
to consult historical linguistics and ancient literary traditions were off stealing someone else’s cows,” says Anthony. “So they
long-standing Indo-European rite initiating boys
to better understand the archaeological record. were expelled from their social groups and told to raid other
into the warrior class. Along its bottom, eight
They knew that the people who lived at Krasnosamarskoe communities.” In Germanic traditions, these bands of young hooded figures follow a leader. The number
almost certainly spoke an Indo-European language. This huge warriors thought of themselves as wolf packs. A famous myth eight may have held some special significance to
language family today consists of most of the European lan- about the hero Siegfried has him donning a dog skin to go raid- youthful Indo-European war bands.
34 ARchAeology • September/October 2013 www.archaeology.org 35
Near a Celtic stronghold in France, a burial dating to about a.d. 100 held the remains of eight men and eight horses. Archaeologist
David Anthony thinks that in the Indo-European tradition, eight warriors may have been the ideal complement of youthful war bands.
example, feasting to establish strong social networks. The Celtic settlement in France that dates to about a.d. 100, eight
koryos could have simply been one more feature of Indo- horses and eight men were buried together. Perhaps, posits
European life that other people admired and adopted, along Anthony, koryos were ideally groups of eight young men, and
with the languages themselves. that fundamental unit of warriors endured into later times.
Since he and Brown have begun following the linguistic trail Anthony is now looking ahead to a time when archaeolo-
of the koryos, Anthony has come across other puzzles in both gists will be willing to use linguistic and literary evidence to
the archaeological record and in texts that could potentially understand the prehistoric past in much more subtle ways
be solved in similar ways. In particular, he thinks a possible than they do now. He notes, as an example, that koryos is
association of warrior bands with the number eight might be not the only term for warrior band in reconstructed PIE.
significant, since it occurs frequently. “In Iron Age Indian texts, There is another word that was apparently used to refer to a
boys are eight years old when they first begin training, then larger group of warriors that included all the grown men of a
at 16 they are initiated into warriorhood,” says Anthony. “In community—surely a very different kind of grouping. “These
the Siegfried myth,” he continues, “the hero tells his nephew kinds of distinctions,” he says, “are impossible to dig up with
not to call for him unless attacked by more than seven men a trowel. We have only barely begun to use the information
...which is eight.” At a 3,000-year-old Bronze Age tomb in in the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary to understand the
n
Kivik, Sweden, stelae lining the inside of the grave chamber people who spoke it.”
depict eight figures in hoods following a leader. “That could
be a depiction of an initiation ceremony,” says Anthony. At a Eric A. Powell is online editor at ArchAeology.
36 ArchAeology • September/October 2013
