BULLETIN OF ARCHAEOLOGY, ANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOGRAPHY ¹ 5 (2005)
Anthropology and Paleodemography
Among the Sintashta and
Andronovo sites (in a broad sense), there is a big number of burial grounds
characterized by quantitative prevalence of children’s burials, as well as
presence of collective isochronal burials. This makes them distinct from the
necropolises of the previous and subsequent periods, in terms of demographic and
ritual characteristics. The fact regarding a very big portion of the deceased
before 14 years of age fails to be clearly explained within paleodemographic
concepts. As the authors believe, one hypothesis covering the facts of
multiplicity of children’s burials, collective burials, as well as social
selectivity, could be the so called «sacral» epidemics. In accordance to this
concept, death of majority of the children buried in the mounds could result
from epidemics of some catching disease created by a respected animal, namely, a
cow. A sacral object and/or nature of epizooty might give significant grounds
for respecting the deceased children. A role of appropriate anthropozoonosis
might be played by foot-and-mouth, or similar disease.
The article describes
paleodemographic situation on the territory of Central Kazakhstan, to be one of
the key distribution regions with respect to the sites representing the
Andronovo cultural and historical entity. In the period of Middle Bronze Age,
this was a development area of the Nurtajsky and Atasusky cultures to be
genetically related with each other, and represented by numerous settlements and
burial grounds. Basing on mature anthropological samples obtained from the
Nurtajsky and Atasusky burial grounds, the authors undertook reconstruction of
paleodemographic situation in the Nurtajsky and Atasusky societies. Subject to
identification being also major social and age groups within the Nurtajsky and
Atasusky communities.