LATE ARCHAIC BURIAL 470 FROM THE NECROPOLIS OF PHANAGORIA

Abstract

As a result of the archaeological excavations of the Bosporus necropolises, anthropological collections have been collected and published over the years, giving an idea of the morphological type of ordinary rural and urban residents in different chronological periods. M. M. Gerasimova studied material from the necropolis of Phanagoria, which dates back to the III century BC — IV century AD. The series consists of 58 adult skulls (32 male, 24 female) and 2 children’s skull. The author concludes that the buried belonged to the Pontic variant of the Mediterranean race. The Hellenistic, Sarmatian and Sindo-Meotic components are distinguished, with the latter being predominant.

The proposed publication is devoted to a find obtained from the necropolis of Phanagoria in 1988. A male skeleton (No. 470) was discovered on the southeastern outskirts of the settlement, among children’s burials, and was located in a ground pit with shoulder pads, rectangular in plan. The inventory consisted of a red clay amphora, a black-glazed kylix, an iron akinak dagger, an iron spearhead, a gray clay bowl, and a black-figure lekyph. The burial dates back to the last third of the VI — the first two decades of the V century BC and belonged, according to the author of the excavations O. A. Zavoykin, to a nobility. The deceased was buried at the age of 30—40. The skull is brachycranic, with a wide, medium-high face, has large longitudinal and transverse diameters and a rather powerful bone structure. The significant flattening of the facial area in the horizontal plane attracts attention. The height of the buried person (calculated according to the formula of M. Trotter and G. Glaser) is 169.6 cm. The set of features of the considered skull is a brachycrania in combination with a fairly wide, medium-high face, flattened in the horizontal plane, characteristic of archaeological sauromatians and early Sarmatians.

The craniological parameters of the considered skull approach the maximum values on the world intergroup scale and are extremely far from the usual set of features characteristic of most ancient series in the territory of the entire Northern Black Sea region. Undoubtedly, the burial is unique, judging by the finds in the grave, which indicates a certain status of a man — a warrior. However, the noted features — brachycrania with weakened horizontal profiling at the upper and middle levels, in combination with the descriptive characteristics of the burial — do not fit into the framework of the known Mediterranean series. This may indicate his origin from a different ethnic environment than the Hellenic one. A similar set of features is characteristic of a number of Sarmatian groups. The material of this well-dated burial complex may be evidence of a rather early penetration of the barbarians into the local Hellenistic circle of the inhabitants of Phanagoria.