The features of the skeleton of the population in the early bronze age of the Volga-Ural Region

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the study of a series of postcranial skeletons from the Early Bronze Age burial grounds on the steppe and forest-steppe territory of the Volga and Ural Rivers basin. Using the standard osteometric technique in the processing of the material and statistical techniques in its analysis, the morphological originality of the male part of the population was revealed. Within the group a robust tall type of constitution dominates, more or less found among the representatives of the early pastoral groups in the Ural-Volga Region. The specificity of the group originating from the territory of the left bank of the Sok River is revealed; it consists in the gracile of the skeleton. Compared to the chronologically synchronous groups of the Early Bronze Age, the Volga-Ural group has a somewhat more massive skeleton structure, especially on the background of the gracile sample of the Lower Don. The author has revealed similarity with the Eneolithic group of the Dnieper-Donets Region. The dominance of the hypermorphic body type in the group of the Early Bronze Age in the Volga-Ural Region is genetically associated with the population of the Late Stone Age in the Dnieper Region. The population of the Khvalynsk Eneolithic culture of the Volga Region, considered by some specialists as ancestral for the Early Bronze Age pastoralists, has a noticeably more gracile osteological constitution and morphologically approaches the Neolithic population of Central Europe.