Scholarly record

PALEOPATHOLOGY OF THE CIMMERIAN POPULATION FROM UNDER THE BURIAL MOUNDS OF THE LOWER VOLGA REGION

P. E. Vladimirovich

Abstract

The period of the late 2nd – beginning 1st millennium BC in the Eurasian steppes and in the Lower Volga region was marked by the emergence of cattle breeding which was a new form of nomadic economic order. Some historians associate the transition to semi-nomadic and nomadic economy with climatic changes in the form of increasing processes of aridization and technological prerequisites. In the early Iron Age, along with environmental and economic changes, numerous cultural and ethnic transformations took place. The first mentions of the Cimmerian people appeared in written sources at that period. The issues of the chronology and the periodization of the Cimmerian era monuments, as well as solution to the questions of ethnic and linguistic affiliation of the population who left the burials, have received much attention in archeological and historical research literature [8; 9; 11; 12; 13]. Nevertheless, there are relatively few anthropological works examining the features of the pre-Scythian population of the Northern Black Sea, the Lower Volga and the Lower Don Regions [1; 4; 10]. Furthermore, paleopathological studies of the Cimmerian anthropological materials have not been carried out yet. In this regard, the paper conducts paleopopologic study of the Cimmerian bone remains, introduces new paleoanthropological material into scientific circulation and contributes to expanding knowledge on features and life of the population who left under the burial mounds in the 9th-7th century BC. As a result of paleopathological research of bone remains from the burial Cimmerian monuments of the Lower Volga region, the authors discovered presence of sex-age disharmony in the form of prevalence in the burials of men and the absence of children's burials. The absence of caries on the teeth of the studied bone remains, traces of bones infectious diseases, as well as a complex of periodontal diseases and degenerative changes in the joints of the skeleton prove that people from the studied group led a nomadic life, and the diet consisted of meat and diary products. The presence of cold stress markers, specific traumas and rare diseases such as an internal frontal hyperostosis proves that the skeleton of Kimmerian series arguably belongs to the nomadic world of the early Iron Age.

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