Cultural and Morphological Features of the Migrating Sarmatian Population from the Southern Urals, the Lower Volga and the Lower Don Regions

The author addresses the issue of determination of cultural and morphological characteristics of Sarmatian migrants in the Southern Urals, the Lower Volga Region and the Lower Don. The innovations in Sarmatian cultures and their reflection on the craniological materials were studied by the methods of one-dimensional and multidimensional statistics. The results of the study of changes in the cultural complexes allowed the author to classify the migration of Sarmatian period, to trace the changes in the clothing complex and funerary rite associated with the migration, to identify the specifics of each of the Sarmatian cultures and thus to determine the cultural characteristics of migrants. The results of the anthropological research allowed the author to identify certain historical periods during which migrants were assimilating with the substrate population in the studied area. All of this led to a gradual change in their morphological appearance. First of all, the mixing occurred at the expense of migrants from the Southern Siberia, accompanied both by fixation of the long-headed Caucasoid component and Mongoloid-Caucasoid anthropological features, and later at the expense of some alien groups with the long-headed Caucasoid complex from the North Caucasus with physically identical population.