"28mm Andronovo Culture??" Topic

Has anyone tried to model and then game the Andronovo culture in 28mm? If so, what figures did you use to represent them??

The Andronovo Culture is held in some circles, according to the Center for Slavic and East European Studies, UC Berkeley, to be of "great importance in understanding the early history of the Indo-Iranian speaking peoples." However, as I understand it, there are no historical or archival remains upon which to base that linguistic interpretation. It seems this rests on efforts to track their movements in the archaeological record, and then assume a direct link w/ the language or languages spoken by their presumed descendants…

The Andronovo are interesting as a Bronze Age people of the Asiatic Steppe and West Siberia, in that they were a pastoral people, engaged in horse-raising, and made extensive use of chariots (presumed from their burial goods and practices). It may be them who either directly or indirectly passed the technology of chariots to the Xia (if not completely fictional) and/or Shang Dynasty Chinese…

Thoughts??

Let me get this right. No archeological or linguistic evidence yet the culture is very important. Strange thinking to me.

Sorry -- my poor grammar… TONS of archaeological material recovered from habitations and especially burial sites, helping the archaeologists to elaborate the sort of culture they possessed. Also, IIRC, there is DNA evidence recovered from bones in the burials to suggest that the people were more closely related to Caucasian peoples than "Asiatic" (e.g. Mongolians).

The lack of evidence is the linguistic -- no writing on any artifacts discovered… And they very unhelpfully failed to leave behind any sound recordings from 3000 years ago (or drop one or two of their I-Phones with "selfies," or their music collections!)!! Our ancestors were just SO unthinking, and unmindful of our needs!!!

LOL that makes a big difference!

Hmmm. Then these people would have flourished between the years the ocean drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Arius?

Seriously--well, sort of--I find it's safest to avoid three situations
1) The GW model, where it is to the advantage of the people selling the rules and army lists to periodically ruin your army and make you buy more stuff.
2. Cutting-edge modern armies. I bought my first grown-up toy soldiers in 1969. Know how many times I'd have had to re-equip? I don't, and I was IN that army.
3. Archaeological reconstructions, AKA Barker armies. You are never more than one successful "dig" from having your costume, weapons or tactics invalidated.

You're much, MUCH safer buying fantasy and SF castings--as long as you avoid armies created by the people who sell the rules. My 2000AD Judges and West End Games Imperial Stormtroopers have each outlived at least three copyrighted rules sets, and if I hadn't sold off my Gundermen, I could be playing them yet.

Andronovo is now seen as a group of several related cultures, of which I think the Sintashta culture seems to be the one that gives us the first chariot burials. "It has been noted that the kind of funerary sacrifices evident at Sintashta have strong similarities to funerary rituals described in the Rig Veda, an ancient Indian religious text often associated with the Proto-Indo-Iranians" says Wikipedia, so you could start looking at the Vedas for ideas.

Read the first chapters of Beckwith's booK "Empires of the Silk Road"

Really like the look of this period. I could imagine Eureka doing them

I could imagine Eureka doing them.

I could as well, but despair of it anytime soon (or even in my lifetime… I ain't getting any younger!)!!

I have decided to go with what little I know from what research on the web for which I have had time. Am going to "approximate" a "contingent" for Hail Caesar!. Am going to use a "mix" of several manufacturers' (Black Tree; 1st Corps; etc.) "Scythian" foot figures ("Infantry" and archers)… No cavalry -- for the "mounted arm," will put selected figures into a handful of chariots. Given the data available, probably using "Shang" chariots from 1st Corps…

Still worth asking Eureka

Still worth asking Eureka

Hmmmmmm…. I have seen Nik post on TMP before. I guess he missed this hint!!!

What about Old Glory "Exotic Persians?"

Andronovo is considered one of the cultures associated with the "Aryans". y-haplogroup (common male ancestral line) R1 is common and much of Europe has this haplogroup.
R1b, which is considered the haplogroup that spread red hair came from this region though most descendants today live in west Europe (and I guess places like America and Australia).
Ironically the Aryans of the nazis were most likely pre-Aryan hunter gatherer people of Europe belonging to haplogroup I1 who cluster in Scandinavia.

In regards language, the Iron Age people of Austria are known to be Celtic speakers. Their earlier bronze age ancestors from the same culture are logically Celtic speaking too. The earlier Urnfield culture from the same region is considered ancestral due to continuation of burial sites and practices between Urnfield and Halstatt so Urnfield is considered Celtic or at least proto-Celtic.

So now you have a culture being assigned to a particular language without any contemporary proof. Linguistics also operates under the concept that language mutation is predictable so once you know the rules you can work out when language changes occurred.

For example the slavic word kladivo means hammer. It comes from the same parent word as gladius which means sword. The parent word has a meaning of striking but it mutated over time into words like the two above. Linguists are able to reasonably guess when these mutations happened and then show what languages pre-historic cultures may have spoken.

Went ahead and picked up some "Exotic Persians" @ "Fall In!" last WKD. Now "all" I need to do is figure out how I will use them for this project!