The Andronovo culture is a cover term for a group of Bronze Age cultures of southern Siberia and Central Asia, ca. 2300–1000 BCE. It is probably better termed an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon. The name derives from the village of Andronovo (55°53′N 55°42′E), where in 1914, several graves were discovered, with skeletons in crouched positions, buried with richly decorated pottery.
At least four sub-cultures have been since distinguished, during which the culture expands towards the south and the east:
Sintashta-Petrovka-Arkaim (Southern Urals, northern Kazakhstan, 2200-1600 BCE),
the Sintashta fortification of ca. 1800 BCE at the Chelyabinsk Oblast;
the nearby Arkaim settlement dated to the 17th century;
Alakul (2100-1400 BCE) between Oxus and Jaxartes, Kyzylkum desert;
Fedorovo (1400-1200 BCE) in southern Siberia;
Alekseyevka (1200-1000 BCE) in eastern Kazakhstan.
The geographical extent of the culture is vast and difficult to delineate exactly. On its western fringes, it overlaps with the approximately contemporaneous, but distinct, Srubna culture in the Volga-Ural interfluvial. To the east, it reaches into the Minusinsk depression, overlapping with the area of the earlier Afanasevo culture. Additional sites are scattered as far south as the Koppet Dag (Turkmenistan), the Pamir (Tajikistan) and the Tian Shan (Kyrgyzstan). The northern boundary vaguely corresponds to the beginning the Taiga. In the Volga basin, interaction with the Srubna culture was the most intense and prolonged, and Federovo style pottery is found as far west as Volgograd.
Towards the middle of the 2nd millennium, the Andronovo cultures begin to move intensively eastwards. They mined deposits of copper ore in the Altai Mountains and lived in villages of as many as ten sunken log cabin houses measuring up to 30m by 60m in size. Burials were made in stone cists or stone enclosures with buried timber chambers.
In other regards, the economy was pastoral, based on horses and cattle, but also sheep and goats, with some agriculture in clear evidence.