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5. THE ANCIENT POPULATION OF LCHASHEN AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE BRONZE AGE ARMENIAN POPULATION

THE ANCIENT POPULATION OF LCHASHEN AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE BRONZE AGE ARMENIAN POPULATION

Mkrtchyan Ruzan

Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia

Mkrtchyan Ruzan, e-mail: ruzanant@yahoo.com.

Аннотация

The settlement and cemetery of Lchashen are located on the southwestern shore of Lake Sevan. Lchashen is one of the most significant sites representing the Middle and Late Bronze Age culture of Armenia. The excavations of the cemetery were started by H. Mnatsakanyan in the 1950s and continued by L. Petrossyan until the 2000s. The skeletal collection at the State Historical Museum of Armenia totals over 300 cranial samples and over 100 postcranial skeletons representing people associated with the Middle and Late Bronze Age Sevan-Artsakh and Lchashen-Metsamor cultures. The Bronze Age sample from Lchashen is the most representative among the published contemporaneous samples from Caucasus. Cranial measurements of this sample were published by V. Alekseev. Those people were dolichocranic and had broad faces and robust skeletons. The precise dating of the funerary complexes, conducted by P. Avetisyan and A. Piliposyan has made it possible to subdivide the sample into three main periods of the Middle and Late Bronze Age (MBA––17th-16th/15th centuries BC; LBA I – 15th-13th centuries BC, LBA II – 13th-12th centuries BC) and to evaluate the changes of physical type over several centuries. Late Bronze Age crania turned out to be more gracile. This transformation was assessed in the cultural context and interpreted as resulting from the consolidation of the Late Bronze Age Lchashen-Metsamor culture and gracilization caused by admixture and other microevolutionary processes. Sex and age data on the Lchashen sample are representative and can be used for the reconstruction of demographic patterns. Mortality indexes indicate relative longevity of the Middle and Late Bronze Age people of Lchashen relative to other contemporaneous populations of Eurasia. The distinctive feature of this longevity is the predominance of elderly males in relation to females of the same age. This disproportion is likely related to the high social rank of patriarchs. Another demographic feature is the high mortality of females in the reproductive age. Owing to the large size of the Lchashen sample, its average craniometric and osteometric parameters can in some sense be regarded as standard. The Late Bronze Age Lchashen-Metsamor culture was also named after the Etiuni ethnonym uncovered in the Urartian cuneiform inscriptions (P. Avetisyan, H. Avetisyan). If so, the Etiuni people were moderately robust, tall, and quite long-lived.

Ключевые слова

Bronze Age, Sevan-Artsakh culture, Lchashen-Metsamor culture, robusticity, gracilization, microevolution, longevity

Цит.: Mkrtchyan Ruzan THE ANCIENT POPULATION OF LCHASHEN AS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE BRONZE AGE ARMENIAN POPULATION // Вестник Московского университета. Серия XXIII. Антропология, 2014; 3/2014; с. 74-75