For adolescent boys of the Late Bronze Age Srubnaya culture in the Russian steppes north of the Caspian Sea, becoming a man meant first going feral, like a wolf. They may have formed “youthful war-bands,” according to a new paper published in the Journal of Anthropological Anthropology, and spent time raiding, pillaging, and generally living free of stricture or consequence, before returning to become productive members of society. This is the theory posited by married archaeologists David Anthony and Dorcas Brown from Hartwick College to explain the unusual finds they uncovered over nearly two decades of work at the Srubnaya (“timber-grave”) settlement called Krasnosamarskoe.
In excavating the site, which was occupied from 1900 to 1700 B.C., they uncovered the remains of 64 dogs and wolves. This is unusual—no other known Srubnaya site has nearly as many. Early on, they hypothesized that it was a site where canid hides were processed, but something about the way the remains had been cut did not add up. The bones showed signs that the animals were butchered and eaten, and that after that the bones were chopped—for no practical reason—into similarly sized chunks.
“It was clear that bones had been cut in a very intense, very standardized way that had no practical function, so…
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