Topography of burials and intracemetery craniological polymorphism in the sample from the rural medieval burial ground from Lower Volga region (Nizhnyaya Studenka–Iтезисы доклада
Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 29 мая 2015 г.
Аннотация:We have analyzed links between burial’s arrangement and craniological polymorphism in the skeletal sample from a medieval burial ground Nizhnyaya Studenka–I from the Lower Volga (dated XIII-XIV centuries AD, Golden Horde period). Intragroup craniological variation has been described by principal components analysis (PCA) and topographical plan of the burial ground has been used as a source of archeological information since burial context was throughout uniform. Burials were single, without artifacts, with south-west orientation of the head of the deceased, wooden coffins of peculiar construction were used. There are no evidences of neither Christian nor Islamic traditions in the burial context. First step of the study was PCA of 15 craniometric traits of male crania of the sample. Measurements were mostly Martin’s and represented both neurocranium and facial skeleton, but not mandible. Scatterplot graphic of the first two PC reveals four very clearly discernible clusters of individual points. These morphological “types” have strong differences between each other in the neurocranial shape, facial size and shape and nasal protrusion. Then burials from which all the analyzed crania have come were marked on the topographical plan of the cemetery. It became clear that just representatives of “type 4” were placed on the plan relatively randomly but others tended to locate close to the representatives of the same “type”. Nearly the same clusters we saw on the PCA scatterplot appear quite clearly on the plan of the burial ground. There may be several explanations of that finding: 1) kinship structure of the population; 2) presence of several groups of different origin in the population; 3) temporal dynamic of the population and use of different parts of cemetery in different time periods. We suppose the last two points more realistic since morphological differences are too strong to be explained by kinship structure alone