Comprehensive study of the early Yakut Sergelyakh burial of the XV — beginning of the XVI centuries

The paper presents a comprehensive study of graves which relate to rare burial sites of the early stage of ethnic history of the Yakuts. The burial belongs to an equestrian warrior. It is confirmed by the findings of the horse harness and fragments of weapons, including a part of a Central Asian composite bow which is unique to the Yakuts, arrowheads and a blade of palma (Siberian pole weapon). The vertebral pathologies and morphological features of femurs also point at riding as a usual way of transportation. Multiple injuries of bones indicate to an aggressive lifestyle. The death of the man was caused by a penetrating injury of the head with a bladed weapon. Craniological characteristics of the man correspond to the South Siberian populations characterized by a combination of Caucasoid and Mongoloid features. In this case, the latter prevails. The ritual funerary complexes correspond to the Ust-Talkin culture, which alongside with cranial features of the man enable us to associate Sergelyakh burial with Turkic part of the Sakha people, which is epically correlated with the legendary Elley Bootur

The woman’s burial of Atlasovskoe-2 of the xvii century in Central Yakutia: results of a complex research

This article presents a complex study of the female burial of the XVII century in Central Yakutia. The burial rite (traces of ritual roasting of the coffin, orientation to the North) and composition of the accompanying inventory (a knife of the non-Yakut origin, a sphero-conical top part of a headdress with a support for a plume, twin overlaid decorative details of the headdress’s crown, a composite pectoral panel picture of sewn-on patches, an earring in the form of a question mark with a biconical bead) determine the peculiarity of the burial, and their nearest parallels can be traced to the Medieval cultures of the Eurasian steppe and forest-steppe nomads, as well as to the population of the Siberian forest and tundra zones of the XVI–XIX centuries. Craniological characteristics of the buried woman draw her closer to the populations of Central Asian and Baikal anthropological types of the North Asian formation

Holocene climate changes in southern West Siberia based on ostracod analysis

The study presents a summary of the latest data on ostracod microfaunas from Middle-Upper Holocene lacustrine deposits of southern West Siberia collected from lakes Malye Chany, Bol'shaya Lozhka, Beloe, and paleolake Chicha. A total of 28 ostracod species were identified. The identified ostracod assemblages reveal local variations in the lake ecosystems as well as general trends, which can be correlated with both regional and global climate changes. A cooling episode during the second half of the Subboreal is marked by the transition from a warm-water mesohaline assemblage to cold-water candonid ostracods at ca. 3.4 cal ka BP. The widespread occurrence of mesopolythermophilic ostracod species at 1.9-0.6 cal ka BP indicates the end of cooling and lowering of lake-water level. From 0.6 cal ka BP to present, the ostracod assemblages area characterized by the high specific diversity, which is probably an indication of the increased variability of aquatic ecosystems due to fluctuations in salinity and water levels of the lakes. Climate changes identified by ostracod assemblages are consistent with the climatic trend constrained by early palynological studies. (C) 2016, V.S. Sobolev IGM, Siberian Branch of the RAS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved