Origins of the Physical Appearance of the Sintashta Circle of Cultures People of the Bronze Age: theoretical and practical aspects

Abstract

The authors examine the anthropological materials of the Sintashta and related cultures of the finale of the middle – the beginning of the late Bronze Age. Theoretical aspects of the problem of morphogenesis in these populations are presented in connection with archeological and genetic studies. The practical part is devoted to the analysis of new craniological sources from the burials of the Sintashta-Abashevo chronological horizon of the forest-steppe Urals. The materials of the collective burial near the village of Malojuldashevo and the burial ground Krasikovo I of the Orenburg region have being published for the first time. The authors determine the place of these populations among the synchronous forms of the Urals and the Volga region. Anthropological heterogeneity of the population has been shown and the prospect of joint archeological-anthropological and genetic studies for the reconstruction of processes of culturogenesis and morphogenesis is considered.

Keywords

• archaeology
• anthropology
• Bronze Age
• Sintashta culture
• Abashevo culture
• historical reconstruction
• craniology