Anthropology  

Bagashev A.N., Slepchenko S.M., Kardash O.V., Alekseeva E.A., Sleptsova A.V.

A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF THE BUKHTA NAKHODKA 2 BURIAL (YAMAL-NENETS AUTONOMOUS AREA, YAMAL PENINSULA)

This article presents results of a comprehensive study of paleoanthropological materials from the Buchta Nakhodka 2 burial on the Yamal peninsula (Yamalsky district, Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area, Tyumen region, Russia). Morphological features of the skulls indicate their belonging to the Eastern-Mongoloid anthropological formation. However, in terms of the nasal bridge structure, they also belong to the Western Caucasoid population. The results of a study using the methods of multivariate statistics show that, despite a high individual variability characteristic of the modern species of Homo sapiens, the range of variability observed in the materials from the Buchta Nakhodka and Yumadoto burial grounds is within the scope of the intergroup variability typical of the North Samoyedic peoples. On this basis, a more representative sample of this ethnic group has been formed, which is taxonomically included in the Yamalo-Enisey group of populations of the West-Siberian anthropological formation. An interesting feature of the studied materials consists in the archaic structure of the lower premolars and the vestibular protuberance of the medial incisors, which are markers of an archaic character. Appearance of the population having lived in Yamal at that time is clearly shown via the facial reconstruction based on crania.

Key words: West Siberia, the Yamal peninsula, paleoanthropology, craniology, odontology, anthropological facial reconstruction, facial approximation.