Kurgan

A kurgan (Russian: курга́н) is a tumulus, a type of burial mound or barrow, heaped over a burial chamber, often of wood. The Russian noun, which is already attested in Old East Slavic, is borrowed from an unidentified Turkic language, compare Modern Turkish kurğan, which means "fortress". These are mounds of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Associated with its use in Soviet archaeology, the word is now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology.

The earliest kurgans date to the 4th millennium BC in the Caucasus, and are associated with the Indo-Europeans. Kurgans were built in the Eneolithic, Bronze, Iron, Antiquity and Middle Ages, with ancient traditions still active in Southern Siberia and Central Asia. Kurgan cultures are divided archeologically into different sub-cultures, such as Timber Grave, Pit Grave, Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnish and Kuman-Kipchak.

A plethora of placenames that include the word "kurgan" are located from Lake Baikal to the Black Sea.

Kurgan (disambiguation)

Kurgan is a tumulus or burial mound in Eurasia, but especially in Russia and Ukraine.

Kurgan may also refer to:

Kurgan hypothesis

The Kurgan hypothesis (also known as the Kurgan theory or Kurgan model) is the most widely accepted proposal of several solutions to explain the origins and spread of the Indo-European languages. It postulates that the people of an archaeological "Kurgan culture" in the Pontic steppe were the most likely speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language. The term is derived from kurgan (курган), a Turkic loanword in Russian for a tumulus or burial mound.

The Kurgan hypothesis was first formulated in the 1950s by Marija Gimbutas, who used the term to group various cultures, including the Yamna, or Pit Grave, culture and its predecessors. David Anthony instead uses the core Yamna Culture and its relationship with other cultures as a point of reference.

Marija Gimbutas defined the "Kurgan culture" as composed of four successive periods, with the earliest (Kurgan I) including the Samara and Seroglazovo cultures of the Dnieper/Volga region in the Copper Age (early 4th millennium BC). The people of these cultures were nomadic pastoralists, who, according to the model, by the early 3rd millennium BC had expanded throughout the Pontic-Caspian steppe and into Eastern Europe.

Cruisin'

Cruisin' may refer to:

See also

Cruisin' (album)

Cruisin' is the third studio album by the American disco group Village People, released on September 25, 1978. Its name carries a double meaning: it may mean just driving around or gay cruising. This became obvious even for straight audiences in 1980, when William Friedkin's movie Cruising was released. Features the hits "Hot Cop" and "Y.M.C.A." which peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Track listing

All songs written by Jacques Morali & Victor Willis.

Personnel

References

Cruisin' (sampler series)

Cruisin' was an American Rock-and-Roll and pop music sampler series covering the years 1955-1970 released by Increase Records, originally in 1970 on vinyl (Years 1955 to 1963, with later years being released in the 1980s, and in 1993 on CD and audio cassette. The covers were stylized after the works of pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.

Each album of the series purported to be an authentic roughly 40-minutes recording of a contemporary radio station from that year, complete with contemporary ads, station jingles, and a radio DJ from that era introducing each song, reading out local news, and inviting the listeners to join in competitions.

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