Cranioscopic Characteristics of Ukraine Pit and Catacomb Cultures Representatives
Abstract
The discrete-variable features on the skulls of Early and Middle Bronze Age humans (pit and catacomb cultures) from the territory of modern Ukraine are studied in the paper. The author has analyzed 253 skulls.
A cranioscopic program, which includes six traits, was used for the study. Concerning them, in the study of the occipital index, posttemporal raphe, infraorbital pattern type II, index of the transverse palatine raphe, and supraorbital foramina, data were taken without regard to sex, and for sphenoidal maxillary raphe, the half amount of data of men and women were determined. To compare groups on discrete-variable features, the computer programs for performing multidimensional analysis, created by B.O. and O.H. Kozintsev in 1991 were used, as well as the method of principal components analysis (PCA), one of the models of factor analysis. The analysis was employed using the statistical program PCCOMP, which performs a principal component analysis and solves the inverse factor problem: finds the value of each component for each object. The PCDENDU program performs a clustering analysis of the matrix of Euclidean distances by an unweighted pair-group method (UPGMA method). Dendrograms were drawn separately using Excel, Corel Draw-11, and 3D Max programs based on the analysis of the PCA method, using the centroid coordinates of the first two vectors. Previously, in order to stabilize the dispersion, the frequencies were converted to radians using the author program created in 1996 by anthropologist, candidate of Historical Sciences A.V. Hromov.
The weak difference between a pit and catacomb cultures (end of the 3rd – the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE) from the territory of Ukraine is shown on two traits of six (Early and Middle Bronze Age). The representatives of catacomb culture are characterized by slightly higher percentages of the occipital index and lower percentages of the infraorbital pattern type II, but such indicators can not be equated with population change in general. The significant similarity of pit and catacomb cultures from the territory of Ukraine gives grounds to conclude that in Early and Middle Bronze Age Dnipro Nadporizhzhya (Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, Kirovohrad Regions), as well as modern South (Zaporizhzhya, Kherson, Mykolaiv Regions) and Eastern (Donetsk Region) Ukraine regions were inhabited by groups of related tribes, the boundaries of whose settlement has yet to be clarified. It has also been found out that, in the presence of a metopic suture, pit and catacomb cultures from the territory of Ukraine belong to the zone of relatively low occurrences.
Keywords: pit culture, catacomb culture, burial, skull, cranioscopy
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