МАЭ № 7630-4

Early nomad from Pokrovka

late 1960s

plaster cast with patina

In 1967, G.B. Zdanovich excavated a group of mounds at Pokrovka on the Ishim River, northern Kazakhstan. The earliest one dates to the early Saka age (700—500 BC). The burial was well preserved, and the funerary items included a leather quiver with a set of arrows (14 of them with bronze arrowheads, and two with wooden ones). The Saka, who controlled vast territories of Central Asia and were akin to European Scythians, practiced an early form of nomadism. Their tribes descended from those of the Bronze Age Andronovo culture. Like their Andronovo ancestors, the Saka were mostly Caucasoid. The Pokrovka male, as reconstructed by Gerasimov (this was one of his last, unpublished works), was likewise Caucasoid in appearance.

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