Steppe – Forest-Steppe System in Formation of the Southern Ural Nomadic Culture in the Mid – Second Half of the 1st Millennium BC: A Prospective After 50 Years

Like any science, archeology relies on sustainable concepts, most of which were formed decades ago. Therefore, these concepts can be used only through the lens of contemporary critical analysis subject to continuous adjustments. One of the key concepts of the Southern Ural nomadic world in the mid-1st millennium BC is the “migration” concept formulated by M.G. Moshkova in 1974 and significantly developed in the works of subsequent decades. Through the next decades, this concept significantly evolved. All in all, this concept boils down to the idea that the Transural forest-steppe people (and the Gorokhovo culture people in the first place) were number-one influencers for the Southern Transural Sauromatian nomads. This influence transformed the traditions and led to the formation of the “Common Sarmatian Prokhorovka Culture.” The analysis reveals that this concept fails to explain transformations in the Southern Ural nomads’ culture in the middle to second half of the 1st millennium BC because nomads had entered the Transural forest-steppes long before the Gorokhovo Culture emerged. The 5th – 4th centuries BCE nomadic burials in the Southern Ural reveal “steatitic” ceramics. Originally it didn’t belong to the Gorokhovo Culture. Instead, it is associated with the Itkul area’s southern extremity in the Ural Eastern piedmont, where, at the stage of the Itkul Culture’s formation from a post-Mezhovka basis under Sargary and Barkhatovo influences, a bright and very distinctive “early Gafury” ceramic complex emerged. The research shows that the Gorokhovo Culture in the Transural forest-steppe cannot be dated earlier than the mid-300s BC. There the Gorokhovo Culture was forming through nomads relocating north and merging with the local indigenous forest-steppe people. These data prove that the new traits in the Southern Transural nomads in the 400–300s BC are solely associated with their peripheral location in the Ural-Volga nomadic world and their wide networking (exogamic marriages) with the Ural eastern piedmont people. Thus, at the turn of the Scythian and the Sarmatian eras, the nomadic culture was transforming due to the processes inside the nomadic community. In particular, a transformation driver was an emerging and collapsing social stratification revealed by Filippovka 1 “royal” necropolis.