From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A kurgan is a type of burial mound heaped over a burial chamber, often of wood, that was characteristic of Bronze Age nomadic peoples of the steppes, from the Altai to the Caucasus and Romania. Within the burial chamber at the heart of the kurgan, members of the elite were buried with grave goods and sacrificial offerings, sometimes including horse-sacrifices.
In 1956 Marija Gimbutas introduced her "Kurgan hypothesis" combining archaeology from the distinctive "Kurgan' burial mounds with linguistics to unravel the problem of the origins of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speaking peoples. She tentatively named the culture "Kurgan" and traced its migrations into Europe. This hypothesis, and the act of bridging the disciplines, has had a significant impact on Indo-European research.
Those scholars who follow Gimbutas identify a Kurgan people as an early Indo-European ethnicity which existed in the steppes and southeastern Europe from the fifth to third millennia BCE.
