Quick Facts

  • Closely related to the Corded Ware Culture.
  • Originated in the forests of central and northern European Russia, then expanded southward and eventually replaced the Yamna culture, from which it is culturally descended.
  • The Catacomb culture could be ancestral to the Indo-Iranians, and/or to the Daco-Thracians, Mycenaean Greeks, Phrygians and Armenians.
  • Stock-breeding culture of semi-nomadic herders riding on horses. Cattle were the dominant domesticated animals, followed by sheep/goat and horses. Cereal agriculture and pig-breeding was practiced in a few permanent settlements in river valleys.
  • Pottery more elaborated than Yamna. Use of similar cord-impressed pottery with geometric shapes as the Corded Ware culture. Bronze artefacts included shaft-hole axes, fanged daggers, adzes, hammer-head pins, bodkins and chisels. Stone maces, polished stone battle axes, flint arrowheads and flint spears were also used.
  • Houses were predominantly rectangular, partially sunken in the ground and built with wooden posts.
  • The dead were inhumed in kurgans similar to the Yamna culture, but with a trench dug into the main shaft, creating the "catacomb", and burial niches in its side walls. Bodies were usually placed in a crouched position on their side and were accompanied by weapons or tools (for men), or pottery and silver ornaments (for women). Graves of elevated social status also contained two- or four-wheeled wagons (and possibly some early chariots), prestige items (axes, scepters), and sacrificed animals (mostly cattle and sheep/goat). A new funeral practice emerged with the modelling of a clay mask over the face of the deceased. These masks may have been the prototypes of the Mycenaean gold masks, like the famous Mask of Agamemnon.


The following mtDNA samples were tested by Wilde et al. (2014). Deep subclades were not reported in the paper and were determined by Maciamo based on the raw data.

Samples from central and eastern Ukraine

KNO : Krasnorechensk, eastern Ukraine
LIS : Lisichansk, eastern Ukraine
NEV : Nevskoe, eastern Ukraine
NOZ : Novozvanovka II, eastern Ukraine
SAC : Shakhta Stepnaya, eastern Ukraine
SUG : Kirovograd Sugokleya, central Ukraine
VIN : Vinogradnoe, southern central Ukraine
KNO4 : U4
LIS1 : U5a1
LIS2 : U4
LIS3 : H2a1
NEV1 : U5a1
NEV3 : H1, H3 or H6
NOZ1 : U4
NOZ2 : U4
SAC2 : J2b
SUG5 : H6
VIN3 : U5a1
VIN8 : J1b1a1

Samples from southern Russia

PEJ : Peschanyi, Rostov Oblast, Russia
TEM : Temrta, Rostov Oblast, Russia
PEJ2 : H1 or H13
PEJ3 : H1, H3 or H6
PEJ4 : H1, H3 or H6
PEJ5 : U4
TEM1 : U4
TEM2 : H (rCRS)
TEM3 : J1b1a1
TEM4 : U5a1
TEM5 : R1a
TEM6 : R1a
TEM7 : U4
TEM8 : U

Samples from Moldova

TET : Tetcani, northern Moldova
TET1 : I1d
Samples from southwest Ukraine

The following mtDNA samples from the Odessa province were tested by Newton, J.R. (2011).

C4a3
C4a6 (x2)

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