Catacomb culture in the context of "Srubna culture"

The Indo-European migrations are hypothesized migrations of peoples who spoke Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and the derived Indo-European languages, which took place from around 4000 to 1000 BCE, potentially explaining how these related languages came to be spoken across a large area of Eurasia, spanning from the Indian subcontinent and Iranian plateau to Atlantic Europe.

While these early languages and their speakers are prehistoric (lacking documentary evidence), a synthesis of linguistics, archaeology, anthropology and genetics has established the existence of Proto-Indo-European and the spread of its daughter dialects through migrations of large populations of its speakers, as well as the recruitment of new speakers through emulation of conquering elites. Comparative linguistics describes the similarities between various languages governed by laws of systematic change, which allow the reconstruction of ancestral speech (see Indo-European studies). Archaeology traces the spread of artifacts, habitations, and burial sites presumed to be created by speakers of Proto-Indo-European in several stages, from their hypothesized Proto-Indo-European homeland to their diaspora throughout Western Europe, Central Asian, and South Asia, with incursions into East Asia. Recent genetic research, including paleogenetics, has increasingly delineated the kinship groups involved in this movement.

Vasily Alekseyevich Gorodtsov (Russian: Василий Алексеевич Городцов; 23 March (O.S. 11 March), 1860, village of Dubrovichi, Ryazan Oblast — 3 February 1945, Moscow) was a leading Russian and Soviet archaeologist of the first half of the 20th century.

In 1903, Gorodtsov identified three stages of the Bronze Age in Southern Russia: the Yamnaya, Catacomb, and Srubnaya cultures. He also assigned names to the Fatyanovo, Volosovo, Gorodets, and other cultures of the forest zone.

The Srubnaya culture (Russian: Срубная культура, romanized: Srubnaya kul'tura, Ukrainian: Зрубна культура, romanized: Zrubna kuljtura), also known as Timber-grave culture, was a Late Bronze Age 1900–1200 BC culture in the eastern part of the Pontic–Caspian steppe. It is a successor of the Yamnaya culture, the Catacomb culture and the Poltavka culture. It is co-ordinate and probably closely related to the Andronovo culture, its eastern neighbor. Whether the Srubnaya culture originated in the east, west, or was a local development, is disputed among archaeologists.

The Srubnaya culture is generally associated with archaic Iranian-speakers. The name comes from Russian сруб (srub) / Ukrainian зруб (zrub), "timber framework", from the way graves were constructed.