Moscow University
Anthropology
Bulletin
Anthropology
Bulletin
Institute of History, Language and Literature, Ufa Scientific Centre of Russian Academy Sciences, Ufa, Russia
Nechvaloda Alexey, e-mail: striwolf@mail.ru.
Early Iron Age is one of the spectacular periods in the ancient history of the Eurasian Steppe. Just in the center of the nomadic world, there is Filippovka kurgan cemetery, situated between Volga and Ural Rivers. Twenty-five kurgans are located on the left bank of the Ural River, 100 km to the west of the city of Orenburg. As a result of the 1986–1990 excavations, the expedition of the Institute of History, Language and Literature, Ufa Scientific Centre, RAS, under the guidance of А.Kh. Pshenichnyuk, investigated burial complexes of the nomadic elite accompanied by unique sculptures of the gold-plated deer and other pieces of jewelry. The excavations also gave craniological material consisted of five skulls (including 3 male and 2 female skulls) of varying integrity. Craniometric investigations along with morphological and total analyses of the male skulls from Filippovka showed a mixed origin of their anthropological type. The male skulls are characterized with large size, brachycrania, well-developed macrorelief, high face, slightly weakened profiling at the level of the orbit and small or medium projection of nasal bones above the facial plane. This combination of craniological features observed in paleoanthropological materials of the 5th and 4th centuries AD from the East European steppe region has been determined as “eastern Europoid type”. Two male skulls and one female skull from Filippovka formed the craniological basis for plastic facial reconstructions. Typologically, the basis for the racial type of the buried men from Kurgans 5 and 12 of the Filippovka kurgan cemetery is represented by a complex of Protoeuropoid traits with a slight addition of Mongoloid peculiar features in the facial architecture. Weakened profiling of the facial skeleton at the horizontal level can be explained by preservation of the archaic features in the Protoeuropoid-type morphological complex. The female skull from Kurgan 12 is characterized with a more pronounced Mongoloid appearance that is reflected in the facial reconstruction sculpture. In the process of restoring the appearance, M.M.Gerasimov’s method was employed with further modifications proposed by G.V. Lebedinskaya and S.A. Nikitin.
Nomads of the South Urals, Filippovka, craniology, plastic facial anthropological reconstruction
Цит.: Nechvaloda Alexey FILIPPOVKA: SKULLS AND FACES. NOMADS OF THE SOUTH URALS IN THE EARLY IRON AGE ACCORDING TO ANTHROPOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTIONS // Moscow University Anthropology Bulletin (Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta. Seria XXIII. Antropologia), 2014; 3/2014; с. 36-37
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