МАЭ № 7591-3

Neolithic woman from the Shigir peat bog site.

late 1960s - early 1970s

plaster

Neolithic woman from the Shigir peat bog site. In 1886, a burial of a woman aged 20–25 was found at the Kudrino gold mine near Ekaterinburg under a layer of peat. The burial is associated with the Neolithic Shigir Culture (late 7th – early 6th millennia BC). The bones were lost, and only the skull without mandible was preserved. Next to the skeleton, bone knives with flint inserts, a base of an earthen vessel, and a half of a broken oar were found. Shigir people were fishers and hunters who lived in the forests of eastern Ural. The woman’s head is small but her forehead is broad and sloping with a prominent glabella. The face is small and somewhat flattened, the nose is short and rather flat. In Gerasimov’s opinion, the woman represented a Sub-Uralian physical type, now common among Finnic and Turkic peoples of the Volga–Ural area. Gerasimov regarded this type as hybrid, resulting from the admixture of Caucasoid and Mongoloid populations. It cannot be ruled out, however, that its origin preceded the divergence between these two races.

Anthropological plastic reconstructions, lifetime masks. 19th - 20th centuries