The age and sex structure of the medieval population of the North-Eastern Black Sea region

Abstract

Introduction. The study of the population living on both banks of the Kuban river in the period before the invasion of the Golden Horde and after its retreat has a long tradition. Knowing from historical sources about the existence of such tribal formations as the Zikhs, Kasogs, Adyghes, etc., who inhabited the territory of the Northern Black Sea region and the Ciscaucasia in the Middle Ages, modern researchers still cannot separate the representatives of these tribes either by the features of their funeral rites or by their morphological appearance. Studied in 2024 the burial ground “Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka Vostochnoye” gave us the extensive archaeological and paleoanthropic data that shed light on the economy of the North-Eastern Black Sea region in the 11^th–13^th centuries. The main goal of this study was to describe the paleodemographic indicators of medieval Circassians who were buried at the burial ground of “Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka Vostochnoye”, located near the city of Novorossiysk in the Krasnodar Region.

Materials and Methods. During the initial processing of the collection, we determined the sex and age of 71 buried individuals, which were used as the materials for this study. We used classical methods of modern paleoanthropology to study the skeletons. The analysis of paleodemographic indicators was carried out using the method recently suggested by D.V. Pezhemsky.

Results and discussion. The analysis revealed an almost complete absence of children under 1-year-old and a violation of the sex ratio. In the studied sample, there were 1.5 times more men than women. Most men died at the age of 45–55, while the majority of women died in their reproductive years. Only 7% of the population survived the age of 55. Comparing the discussed sample with the population of the 13^th–14^th centuries and the series of Adyghe-Natukhaevtsy of the 19th century, significant differences in demographic indicators were noted for all series involved in the analysis.

Conclusion. An important conclusion of the work can be considered the revealed special burial rituals of children under 1 year old, common to medieval Circassians and, apparently, preserved even after the adoption of Islam by the Adyghe. High average values of life expectancy of the adult part of the population, which amounted to 41.3 years, do not agree with the high infant and adolescent mortality. © 2025. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license.

 

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