The woman’s burial of Atlasovskoe-2 of the xvii century in Central Yakutia: results of a complex research

Abstract

This article presents a complex study of the female burial of the XVII century in Central Yakutia. The burial rite (traces of ritual roasting of the coffin, orientation to the North) and composition of the accompanying inventory (a knife of the non-Yakut origin, a sphero-conical top part of a headdress with a support for a plume, twin overlaid decorative details of the headdress’s crown, a composite pectoral panel picture of sewn-on patches, an earring in the form of a question mark with a biconical bead) determine the peculiarity of the burial, and their nearest parallels can be traced to the Medieval cultures of the Eurasian steppe and forest-steppe nomads, as well as to the population of the Siberian forest and tundra zones of the XVI–XIX centuries. Craniological characteristics of the buried woman draw her closer to the populations of Central Asian and Baikal anthropological types of the North Asian formation.

Keywords

• Central Yakutia
• the Late Middle Ages
• burial sites
• the burial of Atlasovskoye-2
• the Yakuts
• craniometry
• anthropological type
• X-ray-spectral analysis
• exchange of goods