The Results of Paleoanthropological Analysis of the Remains of a Warrior from an Elite Burial of the XIV Century near the City of Krymsk

Abstract

The work contains the results of a comprehensive archaeological and paleoanthropological analysis of unique materials which were received at the beginning of the 20th century by the Kuban Museum (now the Krasnodar Territory Krasnodar State Historical and Archaeological Museum-Reserve named after E.D. Felitsyn): fragments of the upholstery of a copper coffin, bronze parts of a saber sheath, iron arrowheads, a wooden comb, and an almost complete skeleton of a buried young man 25-35 years. This miraculously preserved collection comes from a predatory excavation of an underground military entombment next to the modern city of Krymsk. The grave goods, and the closest analogies to the finds and features of the burial rite, undoubtedly indicate the elite nature of the burial and allow us to date the complex to the second half of the 14th century. The analysis using the principal component method showed us a high similarity of the buried skull with materials which were found in the burials of the Aushedz, Karras and Glebovka entombments. This can indicate that the skull belonged to the sedentary population of the North-Western Caucasus – the direct ancestors of the modern Circassians or Abazas. The marks left by arrowheads on the vertebrae and the inside of the rib let us suggest that these injuries were the cause of the warrior’s death.

Keywords

• archaeology
• paleoanthropology
• craniometry
• middle ages
• copper coffin
• elite burial