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A BIOARCHAEOLOGICAL APPROACH TO INFANT BURIALS IN EARLY BRONZE AGE OF THE LOWER VOLGA REGION (RUSSIA).

Evgeni V. Pererva

Abstract

Reconstructions are popular nowadays both with liberal arts and sciences when conducting modern complex studies. Historical reconstructions are used widely as a research method, particularly paleopathological analysis that provides additional historical information about ancient peoples who inhabited different territories of Russia. In fact, the pit culture was identified at the beginning of the 20th century by V.A. Gorodtsov who dated it to 3000 BC. Scientists and archaeologists attached great importance to the question of clarifying the chronology, dating back and regionalization of the pit culture. Currently, there are two hypotheses regarding the formation of the Early Bronze Age population in Eastern Europe. The first is the formation of a pit population on the basis of a single morphological layer with some exposure to additional substrates, depending on the region. The second enables the formation of morphological features of the population within its own center of race formation of early bronze age. Infant burials of the Early Bronze Age are rare enough; nevertheless, a series of 7 graves was discovered allowing us to use the bioarchaeological approach based on the analysis of archeology and bone remaining material of the immature part of the population in Early Bronze Age. The age of the children in the burials whose osteological materials were studied did not exceed 15–16 years. The bone remaining coming from the burial grounds of the Volgograd region was in varying degrees of preservation. All the infants` and children's burials were inlet, which means they did not have their own kurgan hill. Burial objects are extremely poor and represented mainly by ceramic products of low quality. As a result of the study, the authors have established that immature population was rarely buried under barrow mounds during the early Bronze Age. Typically, seven-eight year-old children or teenagers are most often found in graves. There was food stress in children of the pit time which led to the early occurrence of tartar. The immature population of the considered archaeological culture lived peacefully. Nevertheless, children were episodically exposed to stresses in the early Bronze Age but demonstrated successful adaptation to the effects of environmental factors.

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