Craniometric Characteristics of the Ust-Ishim People (the Southern Taiga Part of the Irtysh Basin, Late 1st – Early 2nd Millennia AD)

Craniometric Characteristics of the Ust-Ishim People (the Southern Taiga Part of the Irtysh Basin, Late 1st – Early 2nd Millennia AD)

O.E. Poshekhonova.

Cranial series from the Ust-Ishim burial grounds represent the medieval population of the southern taiga zone of the Middle Irtysh. Indirect data suggests that in the 5th–8th centuries AD, the area was populated by people akin to the low-faced Mongoloids who had lived in the Western Siberian forest steppe in the Early Iron Age. Apart from that, a very small Southern Siberian Mongoloid admixture is present. Generally, the Ust-Ishim people are similar to the Tobol–Irtysh group of populations belonging to the Ob–Irtysh variety of the Western Siberian race. Among the modern populations, those closest to the Ust-Ishim people are the Tobol-Irtysh Tatars, implying genetic continuity with the medieval groups studied by us.

Keywords: Western Siberia, Middle Irtysh, Middle Ages, Ust-Ishim culture, physical type, population history.