This volume is concerned with the emergence and spread of horse-drawn “chariots” in the course of the second millennium B.C., focusing on the Eurasian steppe area. All published Bronze Age archaeological sites with indications for the use of horses and chariots were included, covering diverse and very large regions. The western Eurasian or European part of the Eurasian steppe belt extends from the eastern Carpathian Basin and the northern Black Sea area to the southern foreland of the Urals. The adjacent central Eurasian steppe area then stretches between the Trans-Ural and the Altai Mountains. The eastern Eurasian steppe covers the Altai and lower Yenisei in southern Siberia, extending via Lake Baikal and across the steppes of the Mongolian Plateau to the North-East Chinese Plain. Finally, the Ancient Near East lies south of the Eurasian steppe belt between Anatolia, Mesopotamia, the Iranian Plateau and reaching into the historical regions of Bactria and Margiana in southern central Asia. Already in the first centuries of the 2nd millennium B.C., there are two large cultural areas where the archaeological record first shows horse-drawn and spoke-wheeled chariots capable of high speeds: the Near East and the eastern European steppe. In the following centuries in western Asia, experiments with earlier, local waggon building traditions and with external innovations such as spoked wheels probably led to the genesis of the well-known classic chariot of the Late Bronze Age. In this study, the Bayesian analysis of absolute dates from the south-eastern Ural foreland is, alongside other evidence, used to argue for a probable role of Eurasian chariots from this area as key impulse-providers for the first appearance of horse-drawn chariots around 2000 B.C.. However, the comparison of the evidence for chariot construction in Europe and adjacent areas also shows a differentiated pattern of use, even involving the integration of the spoke-wheeled chariot into the rituals and worldviews of the recipient cultures in the Middle and Late Bronze Age.
