Sredny Stog culture — an Eneolithic archaeological culture (4500—3500 BC), widespread in the steppes of the Azov region between the Dnieper and the Don. In the west, it bordered the Trypillia culture. It was named after the island-rock Sredny Stog (Zaporizhzhia), where it was first discovered by a comprehensive expedition of Dneprostroy in 1928. It developed on the basis of the Dnieper-Donets culture and evolved into the Yamnaya culture.
According to Marija Gimbutas' Kurgan hypothesis, the people of the Sredny Stog culture were speakers of Indo-European languages.
Burial rite
The dead were buried in underground graves (without mound embankments), in a crouched position on their side, sprinkled with ochre; vessels with food, tools, and figurines of people and animals were placed near the deceased. Phase II of the Sredny Stog culture (4000-3500 BC) is characterized by the appearance of corded pottery and stone battle axes in burials, which may be associated with Indo-European expansion to the west.
Economy
The Sredny Stog people were farmers and pastoralists. They kept sheep, goats, pigs, and horses (it is assumed that the Sredny Stog culture was the first to domesticate the horse), and grew wheat, barley, millet, and peas.
Anthropological appearance
Anthropologically, the bearers of the Sredny Stog culture represented a mixture of two racial types: the Neolithic population of Southern Ukraine with a significant proportion of southern Caucasoids of the Mediterranean racial type, and late Cro-Magnons of the northern branch of Caucasoids. In the Neolithic, representatives of this Cro-Magnon type in Eastern Ukraine were the bearers of the Dnieper-Donets culture.
D. Ya. Telegin saw the origins of the Sredny Stog culture in the Sursk (Sursk-Dnieper) culture of the Neolithic era: "These cultures are brought together by some commonality in the forms of pottery and the technology of its manufacture — the pointed-bottom shape of pots, their ornamentation mainly in the upper third with incised comb or pit ornament, the presence of crushed shells in the clay paste, etc. Both the Sursk and Sredny Stog cultures are characterized by a high development of the bone industry, common techniques for processing horn, and the same types of tools made from this material — hoes, fishhooks, adzes, etc. But in Naddnipryanshchyna — the main area of distribution of the Sursk culture — between the period of its existence and the appearance of the first sites of the Sredny Stog culture, a certain chronological gap is noticeable, which is characterized by the undivided dominance here of sites of the middle stage of the Dnieper-Donets culture."
Connections with other cultures
The Sredny Stog tribes, together with the population of the Dnieper-Donets cultural groups, took part in the formation of the Yamnaya culture.
The uniqueness of the pottery of the Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog sites, together with some distinctive features of the burial rite and inventory, indicates that they belong to different archaeological cultures. At the same time, the Khvalynsk and Sredny Stog sites have a number of similar features, which indicates their chronological and cultural proximity and the possibility of uniting them into a large Khvalynsk-Sredny Stog historical and cultural community of the Caspian-Black Sea steppe of the developed Eneolithic.
5500—4500 BC Linear Pottery culture