Continuity and Innovations in Sauromatian and Early Sarmatian Cultures (Based on the Materials of Staritskiy Burial Mound)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the issues of continuity and innovations in Sauromatian and early Sarmatian cultures and in the population of anthropological type. To resolve this issue, the archaeological database of 5 Sauromatian and 48 early Sarmatian burials was used. The anthropological database consists of 31 measured skulls of the early Sarmatian epoch (4th – 1st centuries BC). The anthropological material was studied by methods of one-dimensional and multidimensional statistics. The authors pay a special attention to the syncretic character of a number of burials of Sauromatian and early Sarmatian culture in the period of its appearance on the Volga region territory in the late 4th – the early 1st c. BC. The instability of the burial rite is manifested in the combination of typically Sauromatic continuity of orientating in the latitudinal direction with northern and southern orientations, locating swords along the body instead of the Sauromatian tradition – on the belt obliquely, preserving the Sauromatian practice of accompanying a deceased with food in the form of the cattle side. These facts testify to the complex processes of interaction between the substrate and superstrate population, which were not limited only to the act of conquest. The results of the anthropological study suggest that the morphological appearance of the early Sarmatian population is similar to the rest of the synchronous population and is characterized by the Sarmatian type or the type of ancient Eastern Caucasians, combining meso-brachicrania with the moderate horizontal profiling of facial skeleton at the upper level with a sharply protruding nose. The total group of skulls was relatively homogeneous in terms of the intragroup structure. It is dominated by the type of wide-headed Caucasians with some intragroup variations in horizontal facial profiling. The morphological type of chronological women’s groups of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC witnesses about the continuity of the population.