ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been written without the love and support of my mother and father, David F. and Laura B. Anthony. Laura B. Anthony read and commented on every chapter. Bernard Wailes drew me into the University of Pennsylvania, led me into my first archaeological excavation, and taught me to respect the facts of archaeology. I am blessed with Dorcas Brown as my partner, editor, critic, fellow archaeologist, field excavation co-director, lab director, illustrator, spouse, and best friend through thick and thin. She edited every chapter multiple times. All the maps and figures are by D. Brown. Much of the content in chapter 10 and chapter 16 was the product of our joint research, published over many years. Dorcas’s brother, Dr. Ben Brown, also helped to read and edit the ms.

The bit-wear research described in chapter 10 and the field work associated with the Samara Valley Project (chapter 16) was supported by grants from Hartwick College, the Freedman and Fortis Foundations, the American Philosophical Society, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Russian Institute of Archaeology (Moscow), the Institute for the History and Archaeology of the Volga (Samara), and the National Science Foundation (United States), with assistance for chapter 10 from the State University of New York at Cobleskill. We are particularly grateful to the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Support to write this book was provided by a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1999–2000 and a membership in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton, New Jersey, in 2006, where Nicola DiCosmo and Patricia Crone made us welcome. The term at the IAS was crucial.

People who have helped me in numerous different ways include:

Near East and East Asia: Kathy Linduff, Victor Mair, Oscar Muscarella, Karen Rubinson, Chris Thornton, Lauren Zych, C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Fred Hiebert, Phil Kohl, Greg Possehl, Glenn Schwartz, David Owen, Mitchell Rothman, Emmy Bunker, Nicola DiCosmo, and Peter Golden.

Horses and wheeled vehicles: Dexter Perkins and Pat Daly; Şandor Bökönyi, Sandra Olsen, Mary Littauer and Joost Crouwel (my instructors in ancient transport); and Peter Raulwing, Norbert Benecke, and Mindy Zeder.

Bit wear and the riding experiment: Mindy Zeder, Ron Keiper; the Bureau of Land Management, Winnemucca, Nevada; Cornell University Veterinary School; University of Pennsylvania New Bolton Center; the Assateague Island Wildlife Refuge; and, at the State University of New York at Cobleskill, Steve MacKenzie, Stephanie Skargensky, and Michelle Beyea.

Linguistics: Ward Goodenough, Edgar Polomé, Richard Diebold, Winfrid Lehmann, Alexander Lubotsky, Don Ringe, Stefan Zimmer, and Eric Hamp. A special thanks to Johanna Nichols, who helped edit chapter 5, and J. Bill Darden and Jim Mallory, who reviewed the first draft.

Eastern European archaeology: Petar Glumac (who made me believe I could read Russian-language sources), Peter Bogucki, Douglass Bailey (who reviewed chapter 11), Ruth Tringham (who gave me my first field experience in Eastern Europe), Victor Shnirelman (our first guide in Russia), Dimitri Telegin (my first source on steppe archaeology), Natalya Belan, Oleg Zhuravlev, Yuri Rassamakin, Mikhail Videiko, Igor Vasiliev, Pavel Kuznetsov, Oleg Mochalov, Aleksandr Khokhlov, Pavel Kosintsev, Elena Kuzmina, Sergei Korenevskii, Evgeni Chernykh, R. Munchaev, Nikolai Vinogradov, Victor Zaibert, Stanislav Grigoriev, Andrei Epimakhov, Valentin Dergachev, and Ludmila Koryakova. Of these I owe the deepest debts to Telegin (my first guide) and my colleagues in Samara: Vasiliev, Kuznetsov, Mochalov, Khokhlov, and (honorary Samaran) Kosintsev.

The errors I have made are mine alone; these people tried their best.