Maykop culture

The Maykop culture (also spelled Maikop), ca.

3700 BCE—2500 BCE, is a major Bronze Age archaeological culture situated in Southern Russia running from the Taman Peninsula at the Kerch Strait nearly to the modern border of Dagestan, centered approximately on the modern Republic of Adygea (whose capital is Maykop) in the Kuban River valley.

The culture takes its name from a royal burial found there.

The Maikop Barrow, which was extremely rich in gold and silver artifacts, was first discovered in 1897.It is approximately contemporaneous with and is apparently influenced by the Kuro-Araxes culture (3500—2200 BCE) which straddles the Caucasus and extends into eastern Anatolia.

To the north and west is the similarly contemporaneous Yamna culture and immediately north is the Novotitorovka culture (3300—2700), which it overlaps in territorial extent.It is known mainly from its inhumation practices, which were typically in a pit, sometimes stone-lined, topped with a kurgan or (tumulus).

Stone cairns replace kurgans in later interments.The culture is noteworthy for the abundance of well-decorated bronze artifacts associated with it, unparalleled for the time.

There were also gold and silver items.

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