A 1500-year retrospective of intergroup craniometric variability in Central Asian population (7th c. BC – 8th c. AD)

Abstract

Introduction. The paper revisits the intergroup craniometric variability in the Early Iron Age, Antiquity and Early medieval Central Asian population. Some new cranial materials are considered within the hierarchical system of the regional populations.

Materials and methods. The comparison included 61 cranial samples from all historical and cultural regions of Central Asia with a total of 1100 crania. 12 standard measurements of the facial skeleton were used. First, we conducted Canonical discriminant analysis. Second, the matrix of Mahalanobis D² distances was obtained using the resulting group coordinates in the space of the canonical vectors. Finally, the distance matrix was subjected to Multidimensional scaling and the Ward’s hierarchical cluster analysis.

Results. The first three canonical variates reflect 53.4% of the total intergroup variation and differentiate samples based on bizygomatic breadth, orbit dimensions, nasal bridge height (and width to a lesser extent), horizontal profiling angles and nose protrusion angle. Upper facial height also contributes to intergroup craniometric variability but does not play a decisive role in differentiating among samples of European ancestry in the considered chronological period. Correlation coefficients between canonical variables and multidimensional scaling coordinates suggest similar relative positions of the groups in the scatterplots.

Discussion. Considering the mixed nature of the Central Asian population and the difficulty of objective differentiation of morphological types, we caution against unreflective use of terms “East Mediterranean type” and “Pamir-Fergana race”. The results suggest that the Antiquity and Early medieval sedentary populations are difficult to distinguish from nomadic and semi-nomadic groups of the Wusun period. The new materials confirm the morphological similarity between Early medieval population of Sogdiana (ancient Panjakent) and Ushrusana (Kurkat dakhmaks). © 2023. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

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