Kurumchi culture
The Kurumchi culture was proposed as the first Iron Age society of Baikalia by Bernhard Petri. He oversaw excavations in contemporary Ekhirit-Bulagatsky District[1] of the Ust-Orda Buryat Okrug during the final years of the Russian Empire. Artifacts made of iron and tools related to smithing were found in the dig sites. Petri concluded that an archaeological culture designated the "Kurumchi blacksmiths" (Russian: Курумчинские кузнецы) created the items.[2][3] He also speculated that they were the progenitors of the Sakha people, a claim that didn't go unchallenged by his contemporaries.
Preceded by the Pleistocene |
Holocene Epoch |
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|
Blytt–Sernander stages/ages
*Relative to year 2000 (b2k). †Relative to year 1950 (BP/Before "Present"). |
Alexey Okladnikov oversaw new archaeological digs in Baikalia after the Great Patriotic War. The Kurumchi existed throughout the 6th-10th centuries C.E. based upon his interpretation of Chinese historiography. Certain accounts described a people called the Kurykans which Okladnikov considered to actually be the Kurumchi. The Kurumchi social hierarchy was analogous to the Yenisei Kyrgyz[4] and was perhaps composed of "simple people and the aristocrats."[5] Kurumchi cliff drawings were seen as an offshoot of the Yenisei and Altai Turkic artwork traditions, in addition to having commonalities with the Türgesh.[6]
Starting in the 1990s scholars have begun to challenge the claims made by Petri and his successor Okladnikov. Bair Dashibalov concluded that Petri's findings come from a wide chronological period ranging from the 9th-14th centuries C.E.[7]
Background
In 1912 the Russian Committee for the Study of Central and East Asia sent Bernhard Petri to Irkutsk. He was an employee of the Kunstkamera from 1910 until 1917.[8] Petri was directed to document the social and material culture of the Buryats along with their religious beliefs. He was also instructed to seek out and discover ancient artifacts, so he initiated archaeological digs in the Murin River valley.[9] During the late Russian Empire it was located within the Kurumchi khoshun and was sometimes called the Kurumchi Valley.[1]
Previously an educator named O. A. Monastyreva found a spindle whorl inscribed with Old Turkic script (described below) outside modern Narin-Kunta. Monastyreva assisted Petri in digging at this location, which was the primary focus of the year. Among the initial findings there were pottery shards and a small forge that Petri illustrated.[10] In the following year he returned and expanded upon the excavation sites.[11]
In 1916 Petri explored cave systems in Olkhon Island. Their entrances were barricaded with rocks in such way to only allow movement by crawling. They were perhaps seasonally inhabited only when dry during the winter months.[3] Among the discoveries were flat stone slabs used to create graves arranged in a row. Their appearance was compared to Buryat yurts by Petri[12] and Okladnikov also considered them similar to Evenki dwellings called джу.

Kurumchi blacksmiths
In the 1920s Bernhard Petri published his interpretation of the artifacts found in the Murin River valley during the previous decade. He concluded that a hitherto unknown society produced the archeological remains. Iron items were discovered in their settlements which led to Petri calling them the "Kurumchi blacksmiths".[13][2][14] A pupil of Petri's, Pavel Khoroshikh, stated the research performed by his teacher substantiated the southern origin of the Sakha people theory previously proposed by Vladimir I. Ogorodnikov, Mikhail P. Ovchinnikov, and Wacław Sieroszewski.[2] In autumn 1923 Petri led an expedition to Lake Khövsgöl and found ceramic remains he considered from the Kurumchi.[15][16]
Territory
Petri saw Lake Baikal as the center of Kurumchi activity. He proposed that their northern cultural boundary was formed by the Lena headwaters, contemporary Balagansk on the Angara, and the river mouth of the Kichera; while the southern ran from modern Tunka to the Uda.[17][3]

Iron smithing
The Kurumchi were sophisticated blacksmiths according to Petri. While their iron kettles were of Chinese origin,[14] they were capable of repairing cracks with external patches. Kurumchi cliff drawings include figures possibly adorned in chainmail.[18] Okladnikov detailed the Kurumchi iron-smithing techniques:
"The furnace had the appearance of a large thick-walled vessel with a round bottom. In the pot there were two openings for nozzles, and it also contained ore and charcoal in layers. During smelter, air was forced into the vessel through the nozzle with bellows attached, and from above coal and softened [preheated] ore were gradually added. In the process of smelting, the iron settled, and a large iron ingot was formed, its lower part rounded and the upper surface flat."[19]
Old Turkic writing


In the Baikalia region during the early 20th century coal spindle whorls were discovered. Two in particular had Old Turkic writing and are generally considered Kurumchi manufactured products.[13][21][22][23] Both items were given to Petri for further study,[24] and later deposited at the Irkutsk State University. Petri first mentioned them in 1922[25] and described them as having a diameter of 3.5–6 cm in the following year.[26] An assistant and student of Petri,[20] Gavriil Ksenofontov, characterized the findings as random discoveries found by non-archaeologists.[27] As of 2019 they are reportedly lost and only photographs remain.[28]
Narin-Kunta spindlewhorl

— Kai Donner & Martti Räsänen (1932)
The first spindlewhorl was found outside the village of Narin-Kunta near the Murin. It was discovered by an educator, O. A. Monastyreva, in their garden bed.[35] This location became the principal dig for the Kurumchi culture during the 1910s.[36] Donner and Räsänen[29] presented a translation which was subsequently accepted by most researchers.[37][38][39][40] Ksenofontov objectioned to their translation, but nonetheless considered the finding of Kurumchi origin.[35][41]
Shokhtoy spindlewhorl

— Vladimir V. Tishin (2019)
The second spindlewhorl was discovered by farmers plowing a field outside Shokhtoy. As it was found by happen-stance outside of an orderly archaeological dig Ksenofontov didn't consider the Kurumchi as the probable creators of the item.[35] Donner and Räsänen were only able to distinguish some of the eroded characters. They offered "the fifth of the snowy month" and "the fifth month of the arqar year" as partial translations.[46] Later Ksenofontov,[41] Malov,[45] Orkun,[40] and Bazin[51] offered their own interpretations of the partial text. In 2019 Tishin made a comprehensive translation.[42]
Husbandry

The majority of the Kurumchi were pastoralists despite the limited pastures of Baikalia.[52] Cattle and horse bone fragments have been recovered from Kurumchi sites and both were common subjects in their cliff artwork. Equestrian herds were speculated to originate from the Yenisei steppe and not the Mongolian Plateau.[4] The appearance of Bactrican camels indicates a possible connection to the steppe cultures of Inner Asia.[18]
Agriculture
The Kurumchi created fortified places of habitation in bountiful meadows and pastures or in strategic positions overlooking valleys.[53] Their settlements were continually used, being inhabited either permanently or seasonally. According to Okladnikov they were the first to practice agriculture in Baikalia. Garden beds running adjacent to Kurumchi stockades have been found such as in the Angara watershed nearby Kulakova.[18]
Irrigation was practiced to bolster the productivity of pastures. One surviving series of ancient ditches is 4.6 km outside Ust-Ordynsky starting near Ulan-Zola-Tologoy (Russian: Улан-Зола-Тологой).[54] Two 5 km long irrigation canals were placed 100-150m apart and dug up to 1 meter deep. Secondary lines were made off of the main lines to water additional fields. From the waterfalls of the Idyga (Russian: Идыга) the channels approached the right bank of the Kuda. A fortified position was found near the fields apparently created to block access to them.[18]
Hunting

Game animals were an important food source for the Kurumchi. Most commonly found in their settlements were elk and roe deer bone fragments while sites on the Olkhon Island had sheep bones present. On the Upper Lena outside Kachug are depictions of goats and elk being hunting. Birds appear highly stylized and were likely inspired by waterfowl like geese and swans. Artwork made about hunting includes figures utilising lassos and nets. While both were commonly employed by steppe cultures Okladnikov claimed neither were used in Baikalia prior to the Kurumchi.[18]
Protigenitors of the Sakha
Earlier conceptions
In the late 19th century there were several theories among Russian scholars about the potential origins of the Turkic Sakha people.
Mikhail P. Ovchinnikov was a self-taught archaeologist that hypothesized the predecessors of the Sakha once inhabited Baikalia. He found evidence of iron and copper smithing along with caches of iron ore deposited in pits in the region. Ovchinnikov concluded that the ancestral Sakha migrated from Baikalia to the Lena during the time of Chinggis Khan.[56][57][58]
In 1918 Petri became acquainted with Ovchinnikov at the Irkutsk city museum. They shared their archaeological findings and conclusions about the ancient history of Eastern Siberia. Petri reported that a frequent topic discussed was the origins of the Sakha. These conversations were "jokingly dubbed" the "Yakut problem" as the two scholars speculated on the Sakha ethnogenesis.[57]
Formulation
Petri proposed the Kurumchi blacksmiths were the ancestors of the Sakha people. This was based on three points:[59]
- Unlike the modern Tungustic and Buryat inhabitants of Western Baikalia, the Kurumchi "made excellent pots with a flat bottom and decorated them with patterns." The Sakha were praised as "great masters" of firing pots.
- Kurumchi dwellings are similar to балаҕан (Russian: Балаган), traditional Sakha log yurts.
- Two spindle whorls were found with Old Turkic inscriptions in Western Baikalia.
He found additional commonalities between the Kurumchi and Sakha in their equestrian equipment that included horses, stirrups, and bridles, along with their arrows, knives and humpback scythes (Russian: Коса-горбуша).[60]
Petri concluded the following:
In addition, all the data suggests that the culture of the "Kurumchi blacksmiths" is very similar to the culture of the Yakuts. This gives us the right to make a cautious assumption that the unknown people "Kurumchi blacksmiths" are none other than the ancestors of the Yakuts. In making such an assumption, we must not forget that it is far from being proven, and that all our data, unfortunately, are only shaky indications of the possibility of our assumption.[61]
Some Sakha informants told Ovchinnikov that their ancestors were forced from Lake Baikal to the north and during this movement abandoned the Old Turkic alphabet.[58] Petri assumed that the Kurumchi left Baikalia for the Middle Lena due to pressure from the ancestors of the Buryats.[62] According to Okladnikov, Mongolic peoples began migrating to Lake Baikal during the early 11th century C.E.[63]
Early criticism

In 1926 archivist and historian Efim D. Strelov wrote a critique of Petri's conclusions.[64] He noted the Sakha lacked spindle whorls and weaving skills entirely. More definitive proof such as specific burial traditions was seen as necessary to establish the existence of the Kurumchi.[65] Petri had compared the Kurumchi and Sakha using eleven analogies to which Strelov made his own counter-arguments.[66] Strelov concluded that the Kurumchi culture was not related to the Sakha.[67]
Number | Proposed ties by Petri | Counterpoints by Strelov |
---|---|---|
1. | They had similar pottery ornamentation patterns. | Kurumchi ceramic patterns were only vaguely defined with characteristics that could potentially be found among unrelated peoples in varying locations. |
2. | Women were the primary ceramic workers in both societies. | There have been a multitude of societies with women pottery workers. |
3. | Kurumchi and Sakha cattle had both interbred with yaks. | Strelov presented evidence that there has been no admixture between yaks and Sakha cattle. |
4. | Arrows from the Irkutsk museum collections and the Sakha both have forked ends which was considered a distinctive trait. | The forked end was a widespread arrow design among the Siberian Indigenous. No such arrows were found at Kurumchi sites. |
5. | Kurumchi blades are identical to a Sakha knife illustrated in Wacław Sieroszewski's 12 years in the Yakut country. | Sieroszewski himself found Sakha blades broadly related to examples from a variety of cultures. |
6. | Horseshoes found at Kurumchi sites resemble Sakha made ones. | The Sakha lacked a word for horseshoe and adopted the Russian: подкова. |
7. | Sakha made scythes (Russian: Коса-горбуша) are similar to an example attributed to the Kurumchi. | Sakha scythes clearly originate from Russian designs.[lower-alpha 1] |
8. | Scissors found at Kurumchi sites share the same shape with Sakha ones. | Sakha scissors were the same as those used by Russian peasants of the Irkutsk oblast. |
9. | The Kurumchi smoked from Chinese shaped iron pipes and the Sakha made identical items. | Contemporary iron pipes among the Sakha were introductions from Chinese and Koreans workers of the Olyokma and Vitim gold mines. Their smoking pipes were traditionally made of wood with copper or bone bowls. |
10. | Both groups made utensils made of birch bark and horsehair. | Manufacture of horse hair and birch utensils was common among the Siberian Indigenous. |
11. | Sakha wooden yurts (Yakut: Балаҕан) and Kurumchi dwellings were both dug into the group and quadrangular in shape. | Sakha yurts were never dug deep enough require steps. Quadrangular structures also existed among the Nanai and Ulch Tungusic peoples of the Amur. |

Another rebuttal came from Vasily I. Podgorbunsky who was a once a student of Petri.[69] In 1928 he claimed the Sakha and Kurumchi were entirely unrelated and found their ceramics dissimilar. Podgorbunsky did however consider the Sakha descendants from certain Turkic peoples.[66] This was based upon Iron Age pottery fragments found in 1917 during archaeological work performed in the Transbaikal Oblast and Irkutsk Governorate. The Sakha style pottery was claimed to have existed across Baikalia, Transbaikalia, the Mongolian Steppe, and the Yenisey watershed.[70]
Okladnikov
Okladnikov found Sakha pots to be "flat-bottomed, and have a form identical to them [Kurumchi], and are decorated with a similar pattern, in the form of a notched ridge and incised lines in the shape of festoons."[71]
Modern consensus
In the 1990s Bair Dashibalov began a reexamination of the Kurumchi findings of Petri by using comparative analysis to other Siberian archaeological cultures. The Lake Khövsgöl pottery fragments were assessed as too incomplete to demonstrate Kurumchi origin.[72] According to Petri the assorted Murin river valley artifacts were created by the Kurumchi no later than the 12th century C.E.[73] Kurumchi stirrups are similar to generalized Eurasian produced ones from the end of the 1st millennium C.E.[74] In particular older stirrups are analogous to 8th-9th centuries C.E. Saltovo-Mayaki culture stirrups,[75] while other stirrups are comparable to those utilized by the Mongolian Empire during the 13th-14th centuries C.E.[76] Certain Kurumchi arrowheads are stylistically similar to findings from the 9th-10th century C.E. Yenisei Kirghiz,[77] while others resemble ones produced by the Askizsky and Jurchens during the 11th-12th centuries C.E.[78][76] Dashibalov concluded that the Murin river valley artifacts come from a wide chronological that ranges from the 9th-14th centuries C.E.[7] This analysis has subsequently been accepted by some scholars.[79][80]
According to Vladimir Tishin the two spindle whorls with Old Turkic inscriptions were produced locally between the mid-9th to 12th centuries C.E. However their discovery outside of archaeological digs by non-professionals[27] and poor documentation by Petri made their specific cultural origins impossible to categorize.[81]
Notes
- Bair Dashibalov noted that the old scythe used by Petri was found during the plowing of a field rather than at a Kurumchi dig site making it impossible to verify its cultural origin.[68]
References
- Melkheev 1969.
- Petri 1923a.
- Petri 1928a, pp. 57–59.
- Okladnikov 1976, p. 33.
- Okladnikov 1970, pp. 313–317.
- Okladnikov 1976, pp. 31–33.
- Dashibalov 1995, pp. 20–25.
- Sarina 1999, p. 75.
- Sarina 1999, p. 62.
- Petri & Mikhailov 1913, p. 108.
- Petri 1914.
- Petri 1916, p. 143.
- Petri 1922a.
- Petri, 1928a & 57-59.
- Sarina 1999, p. 63.
- Petri 1926, pp. 12–13.
- Petri 1922a, p. 25.
- Okladnikov 1970, pp. 306–313.
- Okladnikov 1970, pp. 306–307.
- Petri 1928a, p. 5.
- Donner & Räsänen 1932.
- Okladnikov 1955.
- Okladnikov 1970.
- Ksenofontov 2005, p. 58.
- Petri 1922a, p. 39.
- Petri 1923a, p. 13.
- Ksenofontov 1992, p. 103.
- Tishin 2019, p. 40.
- Donner & Räsänen 1932, pp. 4–6.
- Soviet 1969, p. 203.
- Clauson 1972, p. 604.
- Soviet 1969, pp. 18–19.
- Clauson 1972, p. 88-89.
- Tishin 2019, pp. 40–42.
- Ksenofontov 1933, pp. 170–171.
- Petri 1928a.
- Malov 1936, p. 276.
- Clauson 1972, p. 92.
- Bazin 1991, pp. 392, 498.
- Orkun 1994, pp. 350–351.
- Ksenofontov 2005, pp. 59–63.
- Tishin 2019, pp. 43–46.
- Clauson 1972, p. 75.
- Clauson 1972, p. 566.
- Malov 1936, pp. 276–278.
- Donner & Räsänen 1932, pp. 6–7.
- Shcherbak 1961, p. 171.
- Orkun 1994, p. 341.
- Clauson 1972, pp. 261–262.
- Soviet 1969, p. 163.
- Bazin 1991, p. 499.
- Petri 1928a, pp. 57–58.
- Petri 1928a, p. 67.
- Kharinsky 2013, p. 134.
- Khoroshikh 1924, p. 41.
- Ovchinnikov 1897.
- Petri 1922.
- Ushnitskiy 2016a, pp. 151–153.
- Petri 1928a, p. 61-62.
- Petri 1928a, p. 60.
- Petri 1928a, p. 63.
- Petri 1923a, pp. 62–64.
- Okladnikov 1970, p. 334.
- Strelov 1926.
- Strelov 1926, p. 13.
- Dashibalov 2003, pp. 84–87.
- Strelov 1926, p. 25.
- Dashibalov 2003, p. 85.
- Sirina 1999, pp. 77–80.
- Podgorbunsky 1928, pp. 137–138.
- Okladnikov 1970, p. 330.
- Dashibalov 1994, p. 191.
- Petri 1923a, p. 14.
- Kyzlasov 1969, p. 20.
- Pletneva 1967, p. 167.
- Dashibalov 1994, pp. 197–198.
- Khudyakov 1980, p. 107.
- Kyzlasov 1983, p. 45.
- Tishin 2019, p. 42.
- Ushnitskiy & 2016!, p. 175.
- Tishin 2019, p. 50.
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