The Yamnaya Impact project is an international and interdisciplinary effort to understand the massive changes taking place in Europe some 5000 years ago, with its reverberations still visible today when it comes to genetic ancestry, social organisation, and European languages. The project first and foremost deals with the Yamnaya and here the western end of its huge distribution area in the steppe landscapes of current-day countries of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary.

The main research objectives address issues such as the funerary archaeology of the Yamnaya kurgans and their material culture; exchange and interaction pattern; physical appearance and population dynamics; mobility, diet, occupation and lifestyle; interplay with the environment; as well as the nature of the wider Yamnaya Impact. Here particularly the transmission of ideas, innovations, customs and genes to regions further to the west and northwest, and thus also the emergence and expansion of the Corded Ware and Bell Beaker complexes, lies in our focus.