ISSN: 2074-8132
ISSN: 2074-8132
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 11th–13th 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 13th–14th 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.
Introduction. The formation of the historical landscape of the Eurasian steppes during the pre-Mongol period of Ancient Rus' took place under the determining role of the Polovtsians, owing to their demographic dominance in this territory. Despite the historical and archeological study of this era, questions concerning the origins of the Polovtsians remain unresolved. Clarifying these issues is fundamentally important for reconstructing such demographic processes as the origins of Polovtsian groups, their migrations, as well as the nature and extent of their interactions with other peoples. This article presents the results of genomic analysis and the craniometric characteristics of a woman who, based on the funerary inventory, belonged to the elite of Polovtsians society.
Materials and methods. The material for this study consisted of skeletal remains of a woman from a burial discovered excavations of the kurgan cemetery "Krasny IV" and dated to the 12th-13th centuries CE. DNA extracted from a petrous part of the temporal bone was used for whole-genome sequencing and subsequent genetic analysis.
Results. The study established that the skeletal remains in burial 3 kurgan 16 of the "Krasny IV" cemetery belong to a woman aged 25-35 years old. The integrity of the cranial vault allowed for a craniometric study, which revealed a mixed European-Mongoloid ancestry of the examined woman. Analysis of whole-genome sequencing data and the application of population genetics methods demonstrated genetic similarity between the studied individual and nomadic medieval steppe groups, including the early Avars (6th-8th centuries) and medieval populations from the territory of Mongolia. Additionally, the woman's mitochondrial DNA was found to belong to the West Eurasian haplogroup T1A5.
Conclusion. We obtained the results of a whole-genome analysis of a Polovtsians woman from the Lower Don region dated to the 12th-13th centuries. The new data indicated genetic links between the Polovtsians and populations of Central Asia and also demonstrated a significant proportion of Eastern genetic substrate in the examined woman from the elite Polovtsians burial in the Lower Don region of the 12th-13th centuries. Even a single burial substantially enriches our understanding of the genetic landscape of the steppe region of Western Eurasia on the eve of the Mongol invasion. This work contributes to the reconstruction of the local population's gene pool and confirms the close historical ties between the European steppes and the deep interior regions of Asia during the pre-Mongol period.
Funding. This work was supported by a grant from the state program "Sirius" Federal Territory "Scientific and Technological Development of the 'Sirius' Federal Territory", Agreement № 18-03 dated September 10th, 2024, project code GEN-BFT-2407 (H.S.E., Z.A.R., R.E.V., M.A.D., A.T.V.).
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