Okunev culture (), sometimes also Okunevo culture, was a south Siberian archaeological culture of pastoralists of the early Bronze Age dated from the end of the 3rd millennium BC to the early of the 2nd millennium BC in the Minusinsk Basin on the middle and upper Yenisei. It was formed from the local Neolithic Paleo-Siberian forest cultures, who also show evidence of admixture from Western Steppe Herders.
History
The Okunev culture was discovered by Sergei Teploukhov in 1928. It was named after the nearby Okunev settlement in the south of modern Khakassia. Initially, the burials from Okunev were attributed by Teploukhov to the Andronovo culture. Then, on the basis of vessel finds, Teploukhov considered the population to be a transitional variant between the Afanasievo and Andronovo cultures.
In 1947, M. N. Komarova identified an "early Okunev" stage of the Andronovo culture, which is associated with the earliest stage of the Andronovo culture.
In 1955-1957 A.N. Lipsky found Okunev stone slabs with images as part of stone boxes used for burials. Lipsky, who was an ethnographer, not an archaeologist, assumed that the Okunev sites were pre-Afanasiev and attributed them to the Paleolithic era, since he considered the Okunev people to be the ancestors of the American Paleo-Indians, based on parallels in art and anthropology.
In the early 1960s G. A. Maksimenkov identified an Okunev culture based on the excavations of the Chernovaya VIII burial ground, whose burials had not been disturbed by later invasions and did not contain Afanasevo ceramics.
Characteristics
The early Uibat stage, later Chernov stage, and the final Razliv stage of Okunev culture need to be differentiated.
Typical sites include Tas-Khaaz, Beltyry, Uibat III, Uibat V (in the Uybat river basin), Chernovaya VIII, Chernovaya XI, Razliv X, and Strelka.
The typological horizon between the development of the Afanas’ev and Okunev steppe cultures in the Minusinsk Basin and the development of the later Andronovo type is very thin.
Finds from the Okunev culture include works of art, including stone statues with human faces (Tas Khyz, as well as Ulug Khurtuyakh tas) and images of birds and beasts hammered out on stone slabs or engraved on bone plaques.
There are no significant indications of property and social stratification.
Livestock, horse, and agriculture
The basis of the population's economic activity was stock-raising and animal husbandry (cattle, sheep, and goats), supplemented by hunting and fishing.
Stone hoes, grain graters and pestles, and a reaping sickle with a copper blade and horn handle all testify to agriculture.
Pottery
Though the ceramic styles of the Okunev are more comparable to later Incised Coarse Ware (ICW), formally and ambiguously Andronovo ceramics. But as the researchers note, the uniqueness of each of them is an important feature of the Okunev culture. Finds from the Okunev culture include lavishly decorated jug-like and conical vessels.
Okunev ceramics are typically flat-bottomed, with notable continuous ornamentation of the body, the bottom, edge of the rim and its inner side. Most often these are jar vessels, but there are also incense burners with an internal partition.
Metallurgy
Okunevtsy had developed metallurgy based on the ores of the Sayano-Altai mining and metallurgy areas. Okunevtsy and the neighboring Samus culture produced the first bronze in north-eastern Central Asia. Finds include copper and tin and rarely arsenical bronze articles. Simple copper objects were superseded by tin alloys. Bronzes were common in this culture. Tools included embedded-handled knives, leaf-shaped knives, awls, fishhooks, and temporal rings. Along with forging, casting was also used, which indicates a rather high level of metalworking. Ornaments of this culture consist mainly of ring-shaped ornaments with circular cross-sections and flat joints at both ends.
Warfare
Short swords are relatively advanced with clear boundaries between the handles and the blades. A bronze spear was found at the late Okunevo cultural site, the socket of which was forged with two loose ends. The first of this kind appeared in the Asian steppe region.
Burials
The Okunevo culture is represented mostly by mounds burial structures, which were composed of small, rectangular surface enclosures made of stone slabs or sandstone tiles placed vertically in the ground. Within these enclosures were graves that were also lined with stone slabs. 62 Okunevo kurgans consisting of more than 500 burials and 60 single burials have been studied.