Karasuk culture
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The Karasuk culture describes a group of Bronze Age societies who ranged from the Aral Sea to the upper Yenisei catchment, ca. 1500-800 BC. The remains are minimal and entirely of the mortuary variety. At least 2000 burials are known. The Karasuk period persisted down to c. 700 BC. From c. 700 to c. 200 BC, culture developed along similar lines. Vital trade contact is traced from northern China and the Baikal region to the Black Sea and the Urals, influencing the uniformity of the culture.[1]
The economy was mixed agriculture and stockbreeding. Arsenical bronze artefacts are present. They succeeded the Andronovo culture in this region and were farmers who primarily raised sheep.
Their settlements were of pit houses and they buried their dead in stone cists covered by barrows and surrounded by square stone enclosures. Industrially, they were skilled metalworkers, the diagnostic artifacts of the culture being a bronze knife with curving profiles and a decorated handle and horse bridles.
The language of the Karasuk culture is assumed to have been Yeniseian since many of the place names are clearly Yeniseian, particularly the names of rivers, throughout the area. This is the basis for giving the name Karasuk languages to a proposed language family for both the Burushaski and Yeniseian languages. There are obvious problems in terms of the time line for this. While the location is logical for this movement on the way to the lower Yenisei where recent Yeniseian languages are or were found, it could just as well be the original home of the Yeniseian people[citation needed]. This would conflict with the belief that the ancestors of Yeniseian peoples were along the Lena river at the time the people who would become the Na-Dene in North America[citation needed].
[edit] Notes and references
- JP Mallory, "Karasuk Culture", Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997.
