Pit Grave
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| Geographical range | Europe |
|---|---|
| Period | Bronze Age |
| Dates | c. 3500 BC–2000 BC |
| Preceded by | Sredny Stog culture, Khvalynsk culture, Dnieper-Donets culture |
| Followed by | west: Catacomb culture; east: Poltavka culture, Srubna culture; north: Corded Ware culture (derived from Yamna culture) |
The Yamna culture (also known as the Pit Grave culture or Ochre Grave culture), was a late Copper Age to early Bronze Age culture of the region between the Southern Bug, Dniester and Ural rivers (the Pontic steppe), dating to 3500–2300 BC. The Yamna culture is identified with the late Proto-Indo-Europeans, and is the strongest candidate for the Urheimat (homeland) of the Proto-Indo-European language.
Yamna and Yamnaya are borrowed from Ukrainian: Ямна культура and Russian: Ямная культура respectively, and both mean "pit-grave". The root in both cases is яма (yama) meaning "pit".
The people of the Yamnaya culture were the likely result of admixture between eastern European hunter-gatherers (via whom they also descend from the Mal'ta-Buret' culture or other, closely related people) and a Near Eastern people, with some research identifying the latter as hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus or a related people also related to Chalcolithic people from what is now Iran. Their culture is materially very similar to that of the people of the Afanasevo culture, their contemporaries in the Altai Mountains; furthermore, genetic tests have confirmed that the two groups are genetically indistinguishable.
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