ANTHROPOLOGICAL COMPOSITION OF THE POPULATION BILOZERSKA CULTURE’, BURIED ON THE BURIAL GROUND NEAR KAIRY VILLAGE
Authors: Rudych T. O. 
Published: November 2023

The anthropological material from the burial ground of the Bilozerska Culture near the village of Kairy on the left bank of the Lower Dnieper, came from 53 burials.

The male group is characterized, on average, by a long, narrow, high, dolihocranial cranium. The forehead is wide, the angle of inclination of the frontal bone is average. The width and height of the face are average. According to the upper face index, it belongs to the mesen category. The face is mesognathous, its horizontal profiling is sharp. The orbits are medium wide and low, the nose is high. The bridge of the nose is high. The bones of the nose stand out well.

The female series from the burial ground near the village of Kairy is characterized by a long, medium-wide, high, dolihocranial cranium. The forehead is medium wide, the angle of inclination of the frontal bone is on the border between medium and large values. The width and height of the face is average. According to the upper face index, it belongs to the category of mesen, but with a tendency to leptene. The horizontal profiling of the face is sharp. The total facial angle indicates mesognathia. The orbits are medium wide and low in absolute size, they are mesoconch according to the orbital index. The height of the nose is on the border between medium and high, it is medium wide both in absolute dimensions and in terms of the nasal index. The bridge of the nose is high. The nasal bones protrude moderately.

The introduction into the scientific circulation of preliminary information about the anthropological material from the Belozersky Culture’s burial site of Kairy well illustrates the heterogeneity of the population.

The male and female groups from Kairy show morphological and statistical similarity to the population from the burial ground of the Bilozerska Culture near the village of Shyroke. The men’s series from Kairy shows a closeness to the collective series of Zrubna Culture of Ukraine (Left Bank). This may indicate in favor of the fact that men from this population were dominated by a biological component that could well connect them with the earlier population of the territory of Ukraine. Women’s groups from Kairy and Shiroke demonstrate a significant statistical difference from women of the Zrubna and Babinska Cultures.

Male and female parts of the population were formed from slightly different components. One of them was associated with Zrubna Culture’s groups in Ukraine. The other component may have come from a culture that is not represented by craniological material, but whose population was morphologically close to a number of the European groups of Bronze Age: Łużycka, Unetice, and certain groups of the circle of the Corded Ware Culture.

At the cemetery, a correlation was observed between the placement of skeletons in the grave on the right or left sides with the gender of the buried. 19 female skeletons were lying in a crouched position on their left side and facing west, and 2 women were in a crouched position on their right side facing east. 15 male skeletons were buried in a crouched position on the right side facing east, and 5 on the left side facing west. In the Kairy cemetery, children from the age of 1 were also buried in positions on different sides. The position of the dead facing east or west may reflect the idea of the different location of their forefathers homeland.

Female burials contain more grave goods. Most of the bronze items are the decorations, which are concentrated in half of women’s burials and a third of children’s burials. The highest concentration of pots is also recorded in the graves of women, besides, the pots from women’s burials are more diverse in shape. In children’s graves, the number of pots varies from 1 to 3, in the burials of children of the first year of life there are no vessels.