Samara Bend

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The Samara bend (Russian: Самарская Лука) is a large, backwards-C-shaped bend in the middle Volga River at the confluence of the Samara River. It is situated in Samara Oblast, Volga Federal District of Russia.

The Samara River valley offers an easy passage to the Ural River valley, and historically has been a major locus for interchange between eastern European and Central Asian cultures. It is also a classic invasion route. What is now the city of Samara was founded in 1586 as a tsarist defense outpost.

A number of archaeological cultures have been centered here:

* Khvalynsk culture, ca. 4900–3500 BC
* Samara culture, 5th–4th millennia BC
* Poltavka culture, ca. 2700–2100 BC
* Potapovka culture, ca. 2500–2000 BC
* Abashevo culture, ca. 17th–16th centuries BC

Of these, the second is of particular interest. The Samara culture was an eneolithic (copper age) culture of the early 5th millennium BC at the Samara bend region of the middle Volga, discovered during archaeological excavations in 1973 near the village of Syezzheye (Съезжее) in Russia. The valley of the Samara river contains sites from subsequent cultures as well, which are descriptively termed "Samara cultures" or "Samara valley cultures". Some of these sites are currently under excavation. "The Samara culture" as a proper name, however, is reserved for the early Eneolithic of the region.

"Eneolithic" has a similar equivocal meaning. The Eneolithic culture of the region is a proper name, referring to the Samara culture, the subsequent Khvalynsk culture and the still later early Yamna culture. These are termed the early, middle (or developed), and late Eneolithic, respectively, with the substitution of period for culture; e.g., the Samara period. "Eneolithic" as a common name refers to any culture in the eneolithic stage of tool development. It does not refer to a timeframe.

These three cultures have roughly the same range. Marija Gimbutas was the first to regard it as the Urheimat (homeland) of the Proto-Indo-European language and to hypothesize that the Eneolithic culture of the region was in fact Indoeuropean. If this model is true, then the Samara culture becomes overwhelmingly important for Indo-European studies.

Most Indo-europeanists before Gimbutas had hypothesized these stages of development:

* formation in a homeland on the steppes.
* diaspora into Europe, the middle east, and the central Asian subcontinent.
* formation of daughter languages over the now far-flung range.

Gimbutas applied the term kurgan ("mound") to the cultures of the diaspora phase. Developed kurgans do not appear in the Eneolithic culture, but one can see them developing.
The Samara period is not as well excavated or as well known as the other two. Gimbutas dated it to 5000 BC. The archaeological findings seem related to those of the Dnieper-Donets culture with this noteworthy exception: horses.

Grave offerings included ornaments depicting horses. The graves also had an overburden of horse remains; it cannot yet be determined decisively if these horses were ridden or not, but they were certainly used as a meat-animal.
The range of the Samara culture is the forest-steppe terrain of the middle Volga, but the North Caspian culture of the lower Volga is early Eneolithic as well. In the context of the Kurgan hypothesis, this range is regarded as a convenient place for speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language to have exchanged some lexical items with Uralic-language-speakers. As a cross-roads between east and west, north and south, it must have received influences and stimulation from many peoples. Moreover, such a location would require a value orientation toward war and defense, which we know the Indo-Europeans had. They were a warrior culture. They invaded cultures that Gimbutas claims were not bellicose in nature, despite non-hunting weapons found in graves.