The genetically attested migrations of the third millennium BC have made the origins
and nature of the Yamnaya culture a question of broad relevance across northern Eurasia.
But none of the key archaeological sites most important for understanding the evolution
of Yamnaya culture is published in western languages. These key sites include the
fifth-millennium BC Khvalynsk cemetery in the middle Volga steppes. When the first
part of the Eneolithic cemetery (Khvalynsk I) was discovered in 1977-1979, the graves
displayed many material and ritual traits that were quickly recognized as similar
and probably ancestral to Yamnaya customs, but without the Yamnaya kurgans. With the
discovery of a second burial plot (Khvalynsk II) 120 m to the south in 1987-1988,
Khvalynsk became the largest excavated Eneolithic cemetery in the Don-Volga-Ural steppes
(201 recorded graves), dated about 4500- 4300 BCE. It has the largest copper assemblage
of the fifth millennium BC in the steppes (373 objects) and the largest assemblage
of sacrificed domesticated animals (at least 106 sheep-goat, 29 cattle, and 16 horses);
and it produced four polished stone maces from well-documented grave contexts. The
human skeletons have been sampled extensively for ancient DNA, the basis for an analysis
of family relationships. This report compiles information from the relevant Russian-language
publications and from the archaeologists who excavated the site, two of whom are co-authors,
about the history of excavations, radiocarbon dates, copper finds, domesticated animal
sacrifices, polished stone maces, genetic and skeletal studies, and relationships
with other steppe cultures as well as agricultural cultures of the North Caucasus
(Svobodnoe-Meshoko) and southeastern Europe (Varna and Cucuteni-Tripol'ye B1). Khvalynsk
is described as a coalescent culture, integrating and combining northern and southern
elements, a hybrid that can be recognized genetically, in cranio-facial types, in
exchanged artifacts, and in social segments within the cemetery. Stone maces symbolized
the unification and integration of socially defined segments at Khvalynsk.
