The archaeologist Marija Gimbutas has argued that Yamnaya society was unprecedentedly sex-biased and stratified. The Yamnaya left behind great mounds, about 80 percent of which had male skeletons at the center, often with evidence of violent injuries and buried amidst fearsome metal daggers and axes.22 Gimbutas argued that the arrival of the Yamnaya in Europe heralded a shift in the power relationships between the sexes.
