Morphological characteristics of two skeletons from the Nechunaevo-3 burial ground of the Andronovo period

In 2023-2024, the expedition from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS discovered a new burial ground of Nechunaevo-3 belonging to the Andronovo period and initiated its archaeological study. The burial ground is located in the lower reaches of the Alei River in Shipunovo District of Altai Krai. In 2023, a double burial of the Andronovo culture was found at the burial ground. Skeleton 1 belonged to a female 35-40 years of age, and skeleton 2 belonged to adult male. Analysis and publication of new craniological, dental, and osteological evidence of the Andronovo culture from the Alei steppe is especially important given the scarcity of the published anthropological data of the Middle Bronze Age from this region. This study constituted a multidimensional morphological analysis of two buried individuals from the Nechunaevo-3 burial ground. Craniometric analysis of the skull of person 1 indicated its Caucasoid nature with some morphologically specific features associated with general gracility and mesomorphic proportions of the cerebral and facial parts of the skull, as well as profiled face in the horizontal plane and low nasal protrusion. Similar morphological features were generally typical of the Fedorovo population from the Baraba forest-steppe and Upper Ob region. The set of dental features in individual 1 also indicated maturized variety of the western dental trunk. The analysis of osteometric data has made it possible to reconstruct the approximate body length of both individuals. Thus, average value of the body length of the female (individual 1) was 155.8 cm. This value characterizes her height as average or below average. The height of the male (individual 2) was on average 178.1 cm, indicating that individual 2 was tall.